gistfile1.txt

I would like to propose moving support for the PulseAudio sound server into Arch Linux proper. This would also be in preparation for the eventual arrival of Gnome 3, since it will be unlikely we can effectively maintain the needed GStreamer patch any more.

To that effect I have created a plan:

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To provide PulseAudio in [extra]...

Move the following packages from [community] to [extra]:
- libasyncns
- rtkit
- pulseaudio (split into pulseaudio and libpulse)
- alsa-plugins
- pulseaudio-alsa
    Configuration package, contains /etc/asound.conf
    depends on pulseaudio, alsa-plugins
- pavucontrol
- paprefs
- pulseaudio-mixer-applet
- ossp
    provides osspd OSS emulator

Rebuild the following packages with PulseAudio support:
- sdl (sdl-pulse in AUR)
- openal (openal-pulse in AUR)
- libgstreamer0.10-good
    split gstreamer0.10-pulse (in community)
- libao
    split libao-pulse (in community)
- libcanberra
    split libcanberra-pulse (in community)
    will be a split plugin instead of a wholly rebuilt copy
- gnome-media
    split gnome-media-pulse (in community; rebuilt with --enable-pulse)
- gnome-settings-daemon
    split gnome-settings-daemon-pulse (in community; rebuilt without gstreamer patch)

Provide the following groups:
- pulseaudio-gnome
    pulseaudio-alsa
    libcanberra-pulse
    gstreamer0.10-pulse
    gnome-media-pulse
    gnome-settings-daemon-pulse
    pulseaudio-mixer-applet
    pavucontrol
    paprefs

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One of the problems of PulseAudio is that it pretty much becomes the default as
soon as you install it:
  - The client library will start the server if it's not running.
  - pulseaudio will install .desktop files that autostart the server together
    with Gnome or KDE.

Splitting libpulse would prevent that, but I believe we still need to test
on a per-application basis whether we can enable PulseAudio support (with a
dependency on libpulse) without breaking fallback to ALSA on systems without
pulseaudio.

Some packages (like sdl and openal) look for libpulse dynamically and will
still work even though the lib is missing, so they only need an optional
dependency.

I would be maintaining split -pulse packages where needed.