[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1011130: libpipewire-0.3-0: should not recommend pipewire

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: libpipewire-0.3-0
Version: 0.3.51-1
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software

Several packages depend on libpipewire-0.3-0 in order to have
pipewire *support* (but they don't need pipewire: the user may
want to use pulseaudio). However, libpipewire-0.3-0 currently
has "Recommends: pipewire [...]", which means that the pipewire
package is installed as a consequence, which runs the pipewire
server automatically.

FYI, xdg-desktop-portal depends on libpipewire-0.3-0, and
xdg-desktop-portal is automatically installed via dependencies
from packages like atril (a document viewer), gnucash and
viking.

Until now, this did not seem to have any major drawback (except
that having a useless server running, just because that one wants
pacakges like atril, gnucash or viking). But now that vlc has
pipewire support in its plugins recommended by default, this
breaks VLC when one just wants to use pulseaudio. Worse, this
also breaks ogg123, with apparently ***no way of going back***
(I suspect that the use of pipewire changed something in the
configuration), unlike VLC.

Packages that need the pipewire server (instead of only pipewire
support) could just depend on (or recommend) the pipewire package
directly. Users who want the pipewire server can install the
package directly.

Note that usually, libraries do not depend on packages providing
daemons.

So, in short:
  * The "Recommends: pipewire [...]" is useless.
  * It breaks other software, even not written with pipewire in mind.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.17.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages libpipewire-0.3-0 depends on:
ii  libc6               2.33-7
ii  libspa-0.2-modules  0.3.51-1

Versions of packages libpipewire-0.3-0 recommends:
ii  libpipewire-0.3-common  0.3.51-1
ii  pipewire                0.3.51-1

libpipewire-0.3-0 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)