[pulseaudio-discuss] [PATCH] Don't let user-set PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH values affect behaviour

[David Henningsson]

On 2014-10-06 12:41, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 11:13 -0600, Glenn Golden wrote:
>> David Henningsson <david.henningsson at canonical.com> [2014-10-02 11:29:50 +0200]:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2014-10-02 11:17, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 2014-09-29 at 13:50 +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2014-09-28 11:23, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
>>>>>> The logic for choosing the runtime directory is complicated enough
>>>>>> also without adding PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH into the mix. XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
>>>>>> is sufficient for users to control the runtime directory.
>>>>>> PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH has not been documented, so this change doesn't
>>>>>> constitute an interface break.
>>>>>
>>>>> A quick googling of PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH seems to indicate usage of this
>>>>> environment variable in at least chromium and enlightenment, and also
>>>>> recommended in several blog posts and mailing lists, including this one.
>>>>> It is likely used in several home-made scripts.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm hesitant to remove it for that reason.
>>>>
>>>> The argument that "if you use undocumented interfaces, you can only
>>>> blame yourself if your script breaks" probably won't change your mind,
>>>> so I guess we'll just have to make this a documented interface then.
>>>
>>> Well, while not officially documented, we have still advocated the use of it
>>> on this mailing list [1], which to some degree could be seen as the de-facto
>>> documentation of PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH, given the lack of official
>>> documentation saying otherwise.
>>>
>>
>> 2c suggestion from the albatross-avoidance dept: How about adding it to the
>> official doc, but as an explcitly deprecated feature (and with an explicit
>> associated date/version beyond which it will not be supported)?
>
> I'd be ok with that. PulseAudio should then also print warnings when it
> notices that PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH has been set. David, what do you think?
> I volunteer to write the patch that prints those warnings.

What's the reason to remove it in the first place? Does it cause any 
significant problem, or is it just to have one environment variable less 
to care about? If it is the latter, not sure if it's worth the effort (i 
e, other people's effort) to remove it.

Btw; as for XDG_RUNTIME_DIR vs PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH, there might be a use 
case for both, if we want PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH to be auto-created if the 
dir does not exist, which we don't want for XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic