I have a minimal kde desktop, without arts daemon. Then I have a kde multimedia application juk which can use gstreamer libraries. Finally, I have the alsa sound system (and alsa use variable). I would therefore expect that the necessary package gst-plugins-alsa gets automatically pulled in by one of these other packages, most logically by the gstreamer package. However, it doesn't. For a user who simply wants to emerge juk and use it, it's not trivial to figure out that this plugin is needed as well. Furthermore, the emerge --depclean will refuse to remove it after explicit installation, even after it may not be needed any more. # emerge --info Portage 2.1.4.4 (default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 i686 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz Timestamp of tree: Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:04:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33 dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.6 dev-lang/python: 2.5.2-r6 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r2 sys-devel/automake: 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=prescott -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=prescott -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="candy ccache distlocks fixpackages metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo" LANG="en_US" LC_ALL="en_US" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" MAKEOPTS="-j9" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acl acpi alsa berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri dvd dvdr dvdread eds emacs emboss encode esd evo fam firefox foomaticdb fortran gcj gdbm gif gimprint gpm gstreamer hal iconv ieee1394 imagemagick isdnlog jpeg kde latex libnotify mad midi mikmod mp3 mpeg mudflap ncurses nis nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl pic png ppds pppd python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection sasl sdl session spell spl ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd tetex tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis win32codecs x86 xml xorg xv zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia vesa" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
Let's see - kde-base/juk depends on media-libs/gst-plugins-base which inherits the gst-plugins-base eclass which has IUSE=alsa and inherits gst-plugins10. You would assume that somewhere along the line an ALSA gstreamer plugin is built.
Yes, that's what I would assume but it does not get built. I had to emerge gst-plugins-alsa manually.
I can confirm this - I have kde+alsa and had no sound using gstreamer. I have gstreamer, gst-plugins-base and gst-plugins-good and no alsasink element: # gst-launch-0.10 audiotestsrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! alsasink WARNING: erroneous pipeline: no element "alsasink" After emerging gst-plugins-alsa it now works. As you can see, there is no alsa use flag: [ebuild R ] media-libs/gst-plugins-base-0.10.20 USE="nls -debug" 0 kB # equery f gst-plugins-base | grep alsa /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/gst-plugins-base-plugins-0.10/gst-plugins-base-plugins-alsamixer.html /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/gst-plugins-base-plugins-0.10/gst-plugins-base-plugins-alsasink.html /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/gst-plugins-base-plugins-0.10/gst-plugins-base-plugins-alsasrc.html /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/gst-plugins-base-plugins-0.10/gst-plugins-base-plugins-plugin-alsa.html # equery f gst-plugins-alsa | grep alsa /usr/lib64/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalsa.a /usr/lib64/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalsa.la /usr/lib64/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalsa.so
Separate plugins strike again, currently, each GST using app should depends on any plugin it may ever need...
if you want alsa and stuff, you should depend on gst-plugins-meta
Depedencies adjusted with the help of Samuli Suominen (sound herd). Thanks
