Bug 640682 – www-client/firefox-{57.0.1,52.5.2} alsa support

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Description Quentin Retornaz 2017-12-11 13:48:26 UTC]

Mozilla dropped alsa support on firefox v54 and v55 by removing --enable-alsa build configuration option, but it is actually available on ESR and since v56.

Using pulseaudio USE flag, I made a the following instruction for ebuilds to enable alsa if pulseaudio isn't selected (alsa is not activated by default):

use pulseaudio || mozconfig_annotate '-pulseaudio' --enable-alsa

[Comment 1 Jory A. Pratt 2017-12-11 14:21:19 UTC]

(In reply to gentoo from comment #0)
> Mozilla dropped alsa support on firefox v54 and v55 by removing
> --enable-alsa build configuration option, but it is actually available on
> ESR and since v56.
> 
> Using pulseaudio USE flag, I made a the following instruction for ebuilds to
> enable alsa if pulseaudio isn't selected (alsa is not activated by default):
> 
> use pulseaudio || mozconfig_annotate '-pulseaudio' --enable-alsa

Well this can be fixed in esr I am not interested in testing branch. Alsa does not have the full sandbox support and will be drop'd really soon completely.

[Comment 2 Quentin Retornaz 2017-12-11 16:38:22 UTC]

(In reply to Jory A. Pratt from comment #1)

> Alsa does not have the full sandbox support and will be drop'd really
> soon completely.

I did not find any information about this subject. Can you give your source?

What I know at the moment is Mozilla first removed alsa as default sound engine in v51 to drop its support supposedly in v54, but it seems they did go back in v56, allowing to use --enable-alsa again.

[Comment 3 Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis 2017-12-12 09:36:34 UTC]

(In reply to gentoo from comment #0)

Support for ALSA is already in eclasses (e.g. mozconfig-v6.57.eclass):

	mozconfig_use_enable pulseaudio
	# force the deprecated alsa sound code if pulseaudio is disabled
	if use kernel_linux && ! use pulseaudio ; then
		mozconfig_annotate '-pulseaudio' --enable-alsa
	fi


So what is purpose of this bug report?

[Comment 4 Ian Stakenvicius (RETIRED) 2017-12-12 15:48:27 UTC]

Yeah, I don't follow what this bug report has been about either -- ALSA is unsupported but still works in www-client/firefox including v57, and always has.  Upstream does not support it anymore but upstream doesn't support many things, and they have not removed or broken it yet.  Until they do remove or break it, we will continue to support it.

Did you actually try to use firefox with alsa (that is, without pulseaudio)?  If you did and it didn't work please reopen the bug.