Re: [RFC 00/24] audio: add GStreamer backend

[Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>]

Marc-André Lureau <marcandre.lureau@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi
>
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 5:26 PM Geoffrey McRae <geoff@hostfission.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2025-12-02 23:44, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>> > Hi Geoffrey
>> >
>> > On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 4:31 PM Geoffrey McRae
>> > <geoff@hostfission.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> The PipeWire and PulseAudio backends are used by a large number of
>> >> users
>> >> in the VFIO community. Removing these would be an enormous determent
>> >> to
>> >> QEMU.
>> >
>> > They come with GStreamer pulse/pipe elements.
>>
>> Yes, but through another layer of abstraction/complexity with no real
>> benefit.
>
> The benefit is that QEMU would not have to maintain 10 backends and

Twelve according to the QAPI schema.

> all the audio mixing/resampling. The QEMU code would be simpler and
> more maintainable overall.

This matters.

The question can't be whether some QEMU feature is useful to somebody
(it basically always is).  It must be whether it is worth its keep.

Maintaining code is not free.  Easy to forget when somebody else does
the actual work quietly and well.

I'm not qualified to judge either utility or maintenance of audio
drivers.  However, I trust our long-serving maintainers there.

>                            GStreamer has a clear pipeline design,
> better suited (optimized code etc) and you can easily modify the
> pipeline settings.

[...]