Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox 49.0 & Youtube....Video: Yes - Audio: No...

[Miroslav Rovis]

On 161128-23:51-0800, Daniel Campbell wrote:
Pls. note what the title was of this Mozilla Firefox bug just below:
> >>>>>>>>>  Require PulseAudio on Linux
> >>>>>>>>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056
Surely us users could only get to the conclusion there was no more video
w/o Pulse (such as in Debian):
> >>>>>>>>> Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio
> >>>>>>>>> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=130028
(but I let the Debianers know that it doesn't have to be like that... if
they get their developers to do it for them, like Gentoo and Archlinux
did it for their users:
( the same topic: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio)
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=130028#p630102
)
I said that to Mozilla devs, how our devs did it for us (but in the
discussion ensuing this comment of mine below):
> > Pls. read my comment of just some half hour ago:
> > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056#c171
> >

Pls. note the change of title to:
Require PulseAudio to play sound on Linux
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056#c172

This below (living without dbus):
> > Thanks again for caring! I like our devs, I feel fine using Gentoo. Can
> > live without systemd, can even live without dbus! That's not what you
> > get easily at all in all the distros!
wasn't the case just maybe one year, two year ago, with lots of
packages. Lots of packages couldn't be installed, well: not easily, in a
non-dbus system!

Now they can! That's such amazing change in my eyes! And I understand I
owe it to some of the really great, some of among the best developers on
the planet, because there's no computing like FOSS GNU/Linux, and
there's not many distros that match up to Gentoo...

You know, it's not very little at all, it takes long use to understand
even this much that I have arrived to understand by now...

If I compare my knowledge of just a few years ago... I'm slow in my
advancing, but still. And it's amazing to be able to understand these
nuances.

To be able to understand these nuances... to some extent.

Can I ask you about this Mozilla bug that even according to my
poor user's understanding ;-) , is almost clearly an imposition which
wasn't due by any fair reasoning, which wasn't necessary for any
warranted reason, can I ask you about it?

It would take me long time if I went and perused the Mozilla sources
related to this change, and Gentoo ebuilds, and then I would maybe even
be able to understand... But that huge kind of time I don't have...

((
E.g. here's the only two occurrences of either ALSA, PULSE or even AUDIO or
SOUND in the patchset for Firefox-50.0 that I found:

# tar xf /usr/portage/distfiles/firefox-50.0-patches-02.tar.xz
firefox/
firefox/allow-utf8-fallback.patch
firefox/8006_fix_third_party_nICEr_math_header.patch
...[16 lines cut]..
firefox/8009_system_harfbuzz_graphite2_bug847568_v4.patch
...[12 lines cut]..
#
# grep -riE 'alsa|pulse|audio|sound' firefox/
firefox/8009_system_harfbuzz_graphite2_bug847568_v4.patch: if
CONFIG['MOZ_ALSA']:

firefox/8009_system_harfbuzz_graphite2_bug847568_v4.patch:     OS_LIBS
+= CONFIG['MOZ_ALSA_LIBS']

#
(the above are two lines only, not four, that are found, but they are
wrapped for email format)

And that just does not seem to have any connection with the (as I
perceive it) planned imposition of pulseaudio requirement to Firefox by
Mozilla... Or does it?
))

So can I ask you, but I'm perfectly fine if you can't tell either, I'm
not asking you to do the work of reading the code and the ebuilds to
tell me what happened, but I only ask you if you maybe know by mere
skimming through that Mozilla bug and maybe just giving it a glance at
the Gentoo ebuilds...

How come Mozilla says the source now requires Pulseaudio, but neither
the Achlinux (which is systemd-based), nor Gentoo (which is, the
default, OpenRC-based), just do not have that requirement?

What's the play there with that strange requirement bug? Go as broad as
you feel like. I called it, indirectly, an very likely accomodation for
eavesdropping:
https://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-user@×××××××××××××××××.net/msg31928.html

And where's the magic that does it, to do away with that sad (to not say
silly) requirement, in Gentoo patchset?

> >
> It's my pleasure. I only run PA and dbus for OBS Studio. One day this
> system will be back to vanilla ALSA with apulse to fill in any gaps. :)
>
> I'm glad you were able to find a solution. Audio is one of those things
> that's almost unique to every system and problems in one system (even
> with the same hardware) may not match the other, so I chose to give you
> a handful of options to try, since it's not always clear which solution
> is best.
And we figured out, and solved it. But the pleasure was mine!

> If you ever get sick of manually updating the card numbers, you could
> probably write a script for it.
Sure, but it's not often that I happen to need to change the card
numbers. 
> Happy browsing,
Thanks!
>
> ~zlg
> --
> Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
> OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
> fpr: AE03 9064 AE00 053C 270C  1DE4 6F7A 9091 1EA0 55D6
>

Regards!
-- 
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr