Given that we're less than one week from hardy's release, /if/ we retain
this libflashsupport demotion in the flashplugin-nonfree source package,
we should /also/ back out the runtime hal-aware functionality in the
pulseaudio source package. Please see http://pastebin.com/m69f447bb
(link will expire in one month) for a recommended patch for pulseaudio
that will "unbreak" the current audio situation.
Alexander asked for rationale in #ubuntu-devel yesterday, so I'll
explain three {dist-,}upgrade scenarios that should be considered given
a /default/ configuration.
1) In dapper, the flashplugin-nonfree source pulls down upstream version
7.0.63. This version of Flash does not use ALSA. It uses OSS, hence
the myriad hacks in the source package to allow aoss to wrap the web
browser. (9.0.48 is available in dapper-backports, but that's not the
issue we're discussing here.) There is no polypaudio/pulseaudio
support, nor is there any libflashsupport package available.
2) In gutsy, the flashplugin-nonfree source pulls down upstream version
9.0.48 (and 9.0.124 in gutsy-updates). This version of Flash /does/ use
ALSA (and falls back to OSS). There is no pulseaudio support, nor is
there any libflashsupport package available.
3) In hardy, the flashplugin-nonfree source pulls down upstream version
9.0.124. Like the version(s) in gutsy (and gutsy-updates), this version
of Flash supports ALSA but does not support pulseaudio. However, hardy
does make available libflashsupport in universe, but currently this
package is only Suggested by flashplugin-nonfree, and most users will
not have it installed via upgrade-manager or apt-get on a dist-upgrade.
(A corner case is current hardy testers who had it pulled in via the
previous Depends.)
Given the above three cases, we should now discuss users who have
configured non-GStreamer applications to use ALSA. If such a user dist-
upgrades to hardy, audio currently will appear to "break". Because
pulseaudio is configured to exclusively grab the raw audio hardware,
Flash (and all other ALSA-configured apps) will block if s/he attempts
to play audio after pulseaudio has been invoked.
So where does the above patch come in? Applying it makes pulseaudio use
the 'default' ALSA virtual device, which is dmixed and dsnooped for
nearly all audio cards. This change means that audible sound is
restored to the current hardy Flash config (as well as other non-GSt
apps). Furthermore, it means that any users who have created an
asoundrc will have their asoundrcs honoured by pulseaudio. This is
semantically intentional, because we should not break users' existing
audio configurations.
To summarise, currently the libflashsupport demotion is incomplete. It
needs the above accompanying pulseaudio config change to unbreak current
audio /and/ dist-upgrades. While we would have to give up the runtime
hal-aware functionality, we would not introduce regressions from
dapper(, edgy, feisty), gutsy, and current hardy.
--
firefox crashes on flash contents
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888
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