Add post for backporting

1 files changed, 80 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/_posts/2022-04-03-backporting-pipewire-in-devuan.md b/_posts/2022-04-03-backporting-pipewire-in-devuan.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a347b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2022-04-03-backporting-pipewire-in-devuan.md
@@ -0,0 +1,80 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Backporting Pipewire in Devuan
+date: 2022-04-03 17:45 +0200
+category: tech
+language: en
+---
+
+Ever since I heard about Pipewire and used it in a VM (Fedora) I was
+sad I couldn't have it on my Devuan system. Audio quality over Bluetooth
+was much better than in Pulseaudio. (That is, HSP/HFP - so for recording
+and voice chats).
+
+Devuan Beowulf didn't have it at all. Since the update to Chimaera, I could
+install it. Took some fiddling around to start the service, since I use
+Devuan specifically to not have to deal with systemd. - However, it needs
+to be run for the user.
+
+Thanks to [this issue](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/1135),
+I created launchers to start the server in a session. I only had to adapt the launchers
+to not use the `-B` switch, which strangely wasn't present in the daemon binary in Devuan.
+(missing elogind support?).
+
+Now, it kinda worked, but Pipewire (?) would only offer either one of the HSP/HFP or A2DP
+profile - chosen randomly. From some research it seemed this might be a Pipewire bug, fixed
+in newer versions.
+
+So I had to, yet again, look into backporting and the - in my
+opinion - mess of Debian packaging tools. I ended up using cowbuilder / pbuilder, as suggested
+by [BuildingFormalBackports](https://wiki.debian.org/BuildingFormalBackports) on the Debian wiki.
+
+So, this ended up being my `.pbuilderrc`:
+
+	DISTRIBUTION=chimaera
+	BASEPATH=/var/cache/pbuilder/base.cow
+	BINDMOUNTS=/var/local/repo-backports
+	OTHERMIRROR="deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged chimaera-backports main contrib non-free|deb [trusted=yes] file:///var/local/repo-backports ./"
+
+I had to backport `libfreeaptx0` first. Then I had to make two small changes in the pipewire source package.
+Namely, I edited the meson build script, because it kept failing because it couldn't find systemd and libxfixes, although
+these were set as "required" by "options", which were set to "auto". Searching around the internet, this might be a
+bug in meson??? - Not sure. I edited the `meson.build` directly and set required to `false`. I have no experience
+with meson whatsoever. Maybe I should've edited meson_options.txt instead?
+
+Patches applied:
+
+```diff
+--- pipewire-0.3.49.orig/meson.build
++++ pipewire-0.3.49/meson.build
+@@ -280,7 +280,7 @@ x11_dep = dependency('x11-xcb', required
+ summary({'X11 (x11-bell)': x11_dep.found()}, bool_yn: true,
+   section: 'Misc dependencies')
+ 
+-xfixes_dep = dependency('xfixes', required : get_option('x11-xfixes'), version: '>= 6')
++xfixes_dep = dependency('xfixes', required : false, version: '>= 6')
+ cdata.set('HAVE_XFIXES_6', xfixes_dep.found())
+ 
+ canberra_dep = dependency('libcanberra', required : get_option('libcanberra'))
+```
+
+and
+
+```diff
+--- pipewire-0.3.49.orig/meson.build
++++ pipewire-0.3.49/meson.build
+@@ -224,8 +224,8 @@ endforeach
+ cdata.set('HAVE_PIDFD_OPEN',
+           cc.get_define('SYS_pidfd_open', prefix: '#include <sys/syscall.h>') != '')
+ 
+-systemd = dependency('systemd', required: get_option('systemd'))
+-systemd_dep = dependency('libsystemd',required: get_option('systemd'))
++systemd = dependency('systemd', required: false)
++systemd_dep = dependency('libsystemd',required: false)
+ summary({'systemd conf data': systemd.found()}, bool_yn: true)
+ summary({'libsystemd': systemd_dep.found()}, bool_yn: true)
+ cdata.set('HAVE_SYSTEMD', systemd.found() and systemd_dep.found())
+```
+
+With that, pbuilder / cowbuilder ran successfully. And now I enjoy my latest
+Pipewire version. :)