Subject: Re: [bug#63863] [PATCH v5 1/1] gnu: home: Add support for home-pipewire-service

From: brian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2023 14:44:55 -0400

Tanguy LE CARROUR <[email-masked]> writes:

> I came across you patch by chance and, as I had been waiting for a
> PipeWire home service for a long time, I couldn't resist trying it out!

Thanks for helping test it!

> I copied it to my channel, added it to my home configuration,
> reconfigured and… go this message:
>
> ```
> guix home: error: service 'pipewire' requires 'dbus', which is not provided by any service
> ```
>
> I was a little confused, because in the documentation, you wrote
> "As PipeWire does not use @code{dbus} to start its services on demand".

Pipewire does not use dbus to start its services on demand, but it does
use it for communication between the pipewire daemon itself and the
session manager (typically wireplumber).

I guess this is confusing. I'll see if I can explain this
better. Although part of me wants to drop the dbus verbiage from the
documentation entirely, since it only exists right now to explain things
to people who might be migrating from Pulseaudio and used to not needing
a Shepherd service. I don't want to write a deep explainer on how DBus
is used. It's not the place for that, nor do I even know that much about
it.

> I added it anyway, reconfigured and after rebooting (I currently have a
> problem with shepherd not being properly reloaded! 😞) I can see
> the new services as being "stopped" in `herd status` output.
> Are they stopped on purpose? Who is supposed to start them?

The services should all start automatically, but they do all depend on
a user-session level dbus daemon running. I see you're using dbus, but
are you using it from ‘home-dbus-service-type’?

> Sorry, I'm not sure I understand how it's supposed to work.
> I've tried joining a JitsiMeet conference. The video seems to be
> working, but my mic‘ is marked as "broken".

If video sharing under Wayland is working, then I'd say that means
Pipewire+Wireguard are working. The mic doesn't work, but can you hear
audio through your speakers or headphones? Are your audio devices
visible? Are you using Pulseaudio emulation (which I recommend you do)?

> Anyway, thanks for you work on this patch! Can't wait for it to be
> merged.

/me pokes Ludo 😉

-bjc