Re: PipeWire as a PulseAudio replacement (was Re: The Shepherd on Fibers)

[raingloom]

On Sun, 27 Mar 2022 22:55:36 +1100
Brendan Tildesley <mail@brendan.scot> wrote:

> On 27/3/22 01:24, Josselin Poiret wrote:
> 
> > Hello Brendan,
> >
> > Brendan Tildesley<mail@brendan.scot>  writes:  
> >> I would like to replace pulseaudio with pipewire as the default in
> >> %desktop-services, the only hurdle is how to launch the user
> >> daemons in all the different desktop configurations one might use.
> >> Other distros use systemd's socket activation to magically launch
> >> pipewire.
> >>
> >> Otherwise XDG autostarts or some kind of guix home service could
> >> launch it?  
> > The main issue for PipeWire is that it really doesn't support
> > running a single system-wide daemon as we're doing with PulseAudio,
> > so you would need to launch it through XDG autostart, guix home or
> > something similar like you said!  
> 
> I think this is not right. Pulseaudio and Pipewire are both "user
> services". The Guix (pulseaudio-service-type) merely sets up some
> global configuration files and evironment variables. Actually these
> could be a part of the user profile if one really wanted. The only
> parts that actually need to be done by root is the udev service and
> the alsa service setting two configuration files.
> 
> Pulseaudio is automatically started by applications that make use of
> it via DBUS. I don't understand how that works, but for whatever
> reason Pipewire's official way to launch is via systemd sockets.
> Systems without systemd use XDG autolaunch with a trivial script like
> this one:
> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/media-video/pipewire/files/gentoo-pipewire-launcher.in
> 
> So it is not difficult at all to run Pipewire, just a method must be
> chosen.
> 
> >
> > One thing that I think is blocking right now is that PipeWire (or
> > actually WirePlumber, I don't remember) would need to see some
> > environment variables set by other user services eg. session D-Bus
> > or even the compositor, which isn't possible yet with Shepherd.  
> 
> Which environment variables are you talking about? I'm running
> pipewire on Guix System
> 
> and it seems to work fine.
> 
> > Best,  

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