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Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

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groze
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#21 Post by groze »

That going to be bad. I tried other distro not just Debian based. I actually installed pulse audio which was available through there repository. It conflicted with the current audio & you couldn't uninstall the default without breaking your system. Firefox is supposed to have an unbranded release version (Not iceweasel), what every happen to that? Would that have the same requirement?

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llivv
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#22 Post by llivv »

groze wrote:That going to be bad. I tried other distro not just Debian based. I actually installed pulse audio which was available through there repository. It conflicted with the current audio & you couldn't uninstall the default without breaking your system. Firefox is supposed to have an unbranded release version (Not iceweasel), what every happen to that? Would that have the same requirement?
Current firefox release is version 51 and it works without pulse ( at least if you download the binary from mozilla than extract or install it on your system )
base url for the mozilla binaries is http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/
current releases
32 bit http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... inux-i686/
choose your locale: example en-US/
firefox-51.0.tar.bz2
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... .0.tar.bz2

64 bit http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... ux-x96_64/
grab your locale: example fi/
firefox-51.0.tar.bz2
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/rele ... .0.tar.bz2

nightly 52 also works on my debian boxes when downloading binaries this way as well

version 52 first release day ( this one works without pulse - at least on my debian installs )
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nigh ... a-central/

version 52 last release day ( this one might require pulse - you'll have to test it and see )
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nigh ... a-central/

eventually the stable release will require pulse too, UNLESS the mozilla devs come to their senses.
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debiman
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#23 Post by debiman »

folks, no unfounded panic please.

firefox is in many distros' repos and does not need pulseaudio.

here are archlinux version's dependencies:

Code: Select all

Name            : firefox
Version         : 51.0.1-1
Depends On      : gtk3  gtk2  mozilla-common  libxt  startup-notification  mime-types  dbus-glib
                  alsa-lib  ffmpeg  libvpx  libevent  nss  hunspell  sqlite  ttf-font  icu
looking at firefox nightly dependencies:

Code: Select all

firefox-aurora 53.0a2.20170210084046-1  (2017-02-10 16:28)
==> firefox-aurora dependencies:
 - gtk3 (already installed)
 - libxt (already installed)
 - startup-notification (already installed)
 - mime-types (already installed)
 - dbus-glib (already installed)
 - alsa-lib (already installed)
 - dbus-glib (already installed)
 - libnotify (already installed)
 - desktop-file-utils (already installed)
 - hicolor-icon-theme (already installed)
 - libvpx (already installed)
 - libevent (already installed)
 - nss>=3.14.1 (already installed)
 - hunspell (already installed)

whatever little truth the rumour is based on, it's not like the title says.

i tried to make sense of the bug report, but couldn't. too much noise.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#24 Post by Segfault »

According to Mozilla the ALSA code is unsupported, although it is currently building fine it may break in the future and it won't be fixed.

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debiman
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#25 Post by debiman »

can you back that with some info?
i guess the info is in that bug report?
could you please point the relevant sections out.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#26 Post by Segfault »

No I do not remember where I read it, but I certainly did. Up to you, believe or not.

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sjukfan
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#27 Post by sjukfan »

debiman wrote: whatever little truth the rumour is based on, it's not like the title says.

i tried to make sense of the bug report, but couldn't. too much noise.
Might help if you actually read the bug report. The original title was saying Firefox would require PulseAudio, since then it has changed to "Require PulseAudio to play sound on Linux".

Gerald Squelart at Mozilla said 2016-11-28
Thank you Miroslav, I've updated the bug title to clarify that PulseAudio is required *to play sound* on Linux.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 47056#c172

Anthony Jones at Mozilla said 2016-12-15
ALSA support is dropped from Firefox 52 onward.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 47056#c178

The Alsa code is still there but you'll have to compile the code with --enable-alsa and maybe --disable-pulseaudio. So it's possible, but it's up to the maintainers if they decide to follow the official route or not. Mozilla wont work on Alsa fixes though.
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debiman
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#28 Post by debiman »

sjukfan wrote:Anthony Jones at Mozilla said 2016-12-15
ALSA support is dropped from Firefox 52 onward.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 47056#c178

The Alsa code is still there but you'll have to compile the code with --enable-alsa and maybe --disable-pulseaudio. So it's possible, but it's up to the maintainers if they decide to follow the official route or not. Mozilla wont work on Alsa fixes though.
this is the bit of hard info i was looking for. thanks.
my archlinux' (without pulseaudio) firefox is on 51.something now.
we'll see what happens when it hits 52; I can only hope arch devs are sane enough to use the --enable-alsa switch.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#29 Post by debuf »

debiman wrote:folks, no unfounded panic please.

firefox is in many distros' repos and does not need pulseaudio.

*snip*

whatever little truth the rumour is based on, it's not like the title says.

i tried to make sense of the bug report, but couldn't. too much noise.
It's not unfounded panic, it's not a rumour, it's official announcement from Mozilla : "From Firefox 52 onwards, pulseaudio is a hard requirement for sound on linux. Alsa is unsupported and alsa code will be removed in Firefox 54." All this is written on the bug report you failed to make sense of.

Firefox 52 has just been released and the issue is now live and kicking.
debiman wrote:can you back that with some info?
i guess the info is in that bug report?
could you please point the relevant sections out.
From this Arch bug report[1] about the issue, it seems that the upcoming Firefox sandbox feature breaks Alsa. Alsa code will stay in Firefox unsupported until its removal in Firefox 54. In the meantime there is a build time flag --enable-alsa to compile Firefox with alsa support.

From the Mozilla bug, OP states without substantiating that this move is made to reduce the problems and maintenance associated with maintaining multiple audio backends. Then says "The point is to avoid people accidentally not installing Pulse Audio and having a broken/poor playback experience." without explaining why it would be so. Others argue that "Making it a hard dependency makes the choice "install libpulse or don't use Firefox", rather than "install libpulse otherwise you won't have sound in Firefox"."

About 75% of the sound issues I've experienced in Linux over the years were solved by uninstalling pulseaudio to use alsa, to me this is trying to fix something that's not broken and I fall precisely in the "install libpulse or don't use Firefox" case. So I guess I'll pin Firefox to v51 while I decide which other web browser to use.

Then after the release of Firefox 52 this "feature" grabbed the attention of users unhappy with this move and after two complaints in the bug report the comments have been restricted.

[1]: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53195

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#30 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

debuf wrote:Firefox 52 has just been released and the issue is now live and kicking.
And there is no PulseAudio dependency:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox

So... just FUD then?

EDIT: also, heftig has marked that Arch bug report as "Fixed" and there appears to be no PA dependency in the Arch package either:

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr ... 4/firefox/
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#31 Post by Segfault »

Not FUD. It merely means package maintainers managed to build a working copy of FF without PA - this time.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#32 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

^ From the Arch bug report:
heftig wrote:The coming sandbox breaks ALSA. I'll build with --enable-alsa until Firefox 54, at which point libpulse will be a hard depend.
I'm using GNOME anyway in my Arch box so... :mrgreen:
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sjukfan
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#33 Post by sjukfan »

This annoys me a lot. For a while there I thought they were going to go the right way and let people use it without sound if they wanted but no... <sigh> I guess I'll have to compile it myself then.

For those who CBA to compile themselves this might be an alternative PulseAudio as a minimal unintrusive dumb pipe to ALSA. Hopefully it's not too intrusive and you can run everything but Firefox in ALSA.
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#34 Post by stevepusser »

It turns out the Sid Debian Firefox source files have an internal mechanism to adjust the build-depends and rules file for backports. You just have to get the 94 Sid source files (apt-get source), increment the changelog (dch -i) and make sure the release in the first line of the changelog is "jessie-backports", regenerate new debian.tar.xz and .dsc files (debuild -S -us -uc), delete the existing extracted source folder, and then re-extract the tweaked version with "dpkg-source -x <your-tweaked-version>.dsc". Then build with "debuild -uc -us". I think it has some internal code to automatically use all your CPU cores for the build, but haven't tested that locally.

You can add the alsa support option to debian/mozconfig.in before the source files are regenerated, if you wish.
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#35 Post by stevepusser »

Has anyone tried apulse instead of pulseaudio to see if it fools Firefox 52?

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#36 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

stevepusser wrote:Has anyone tried apulse instead of pulseaudio to see if it fools Firefox 52?

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258

Code: Select all

Helium: ~/git/apulse/build $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
..                           
-- Checking for modules 'glib-2.0;alsa'
--   No package 'alsa' found
CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:415 (message):
  A required package was not found
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:588 (_pkg_check_modules_internal)
  CMakeLists.txt:8 (pkg_check_modules)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/home/empty/git/apulse/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
https://gist.github.com/Head-on-a-Stick ... 421e137c7a

:(

I can confirm that firefox-esr version 52 (from experimental) will *not* play audio without PulseAudio.

However, Debian has updated version 45 and it may be that this is chosen for the stable release (I hope).
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#37 Post by stevepusser »

The ALSA dev package is libasound2-dev. There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#38 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

stevepusser wrote:The ALSA dev package is libasound2-dev
Thank you very much!

I have now compiled and installed apulse in my Debian stretch system and I can confirm that firefox-esr version 52.0.1 will produce sound without PulseAudio installed.

This installation is booting with runit rather than systemd so I will have to try one of my systemd boxes as well.
There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
Thank you again, I will see if I can package this myself :idea:

EDIT: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=775098 :)
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#39 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
Thank you again, I will see if I can package this myself
The Ubuntu .deb installs and works in my stretch system.

I have rebuilt the .deb in stretch, just in case:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKgG ... XhIUGRqc28
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#40 Post by stevepusser »

I see the developer for apulse, the same guy who created the freshplayer wrapper for pepperflash, is again actively developing it since Firefox started demanding pulseaudio. I'll try building the latest 1.9 release for my Jessie multimedia OBS repo and for the MX repos--just reusing the debian folder from the PPA's 1.6.
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