Bug 890766 – media-video/pipewire pipewire.desktop doesn't start gentoo-pipewire-launcher under SDDM with dwl and wayland

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO

[Description jamiegetty1 2023-01-14 00:06:52 UTC]

When you have SDDM installed, a script called you emerge the pipewire package, a file called /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop is installed with the following contents:

 $ cat /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop 
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name[de]=PipeWire Mediensystem
Name=PipeWire Media System
Comment[de]=Das PipeWire Mediensystem starten
Comment=Start the PipeWire Media System
Exec=/usr/bin/gentoo-pipewire-launcher
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-GNOME-HiddenUnderSystemd=true
X-KDE-HiddenUnderSystemd=true
X-systemd-skip=true

This looks like it's supposed to start gentoo-pipewire-launcher when you log in, but it doesn't do that for me. I'm using dwl with an autostart patch, so I have to put gentoo-pipewire-launcher in dwl to get audio working.

The pipewire wiki page states the following:

"Gentoo's PipeWire package now installs the needed autostart files to /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop, so no action should be required." 

I think this isn't true as far as I know.

[Comment 1 Sam James 2023-01-14 22:46:59 UTC]

Not all DEs/WMs respect XDG autostart. The wiki page makes clear that if your DE doesn't, you will need to find some way to start it yourself?

[Comment 2 Alexis 2023-01-27 01:33:06 UTC]

The wiki page was ambiguous: i gather the intent of listing particular display managers in the section heading was to simply provide examples of what a 'display manager' is, rather than to specify DMs where "no action should be required", but the latter reading is certainly reasonable.

Based on the comment at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8721563.html#8721563, i've just updated the wiki page to note that SDDM does not make use of autostart files, alongside some more general phrasing changes.