> I don't believe that mpd has such "build default" settings (and I
> don't really see a pressing need for it to start having them).

If you look at the source, you can see that in the absence of a sound
output configuration, audio_output_detect calls
ao_plugin_test_default_device for each output plugin that has a
test_default_device handler.

The order in which the plugins are given is simply that in which they
are listed in output_list.c. There, you can see that alsaPlugin is
listed before pulse_output_plugin. Hence, on Ubuntu, ALSA is preferred
to PulseAudio.

That is what I meant by a build default.

Now to be clear about what I want: what I am trying to achieve here is
an mpd package which does not require user configuration to work on a
default Ubuntu install (which the current system does, as a default
Ubuntu install uses PulseAudio, while mpd defaults to using ALSA). mpd
can be packaged in such a way that a user does not need do anything
other than install it to use it; I'm just trying to get closer to that
goal.

Currently, there are two ways in which mpd can be used on Ubuntu: as a
system server, or per-user. Both can be made to work by default with
(per-user) PulseAudio. As explained on

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/PulseAudio

if mpd is run in system mode, then the mpd user needs to be a member of
the pulse-access group to be able to access the user's PulseAudio
daemon. (You mention above that "I have found this can cause other
issues with pulseaudio, and isn't recommended by the pulseaudio devs."
If that is still the case, please can you explain the problems and point
to the advice, as the wiki page referred to above clearly needs
updating.)

On the other hand, if mpd is run in user mode, it can access PulseAudio
already. Both these can be achieved by adding a PulseAudio configuration
stanza to /etc/mpd.conf. Maybe it is worth considering making this the
default mode of operation of mpd in any case: most users, whether on
single-user or multi-user machines, are likely to want to play their own
music collections, not some central collection, and running per-user mpd
instances also reduces the likelihood of security problems.

> Potentially what you want could be achieved by setting
> MPDCONF=/etc/mpd.conf-system or some such (see /etc/default/mpd), and
> using /etc/mpd.conf for normal user instances of mpd, but this assumes
> that every user wants exactly the same configuration for their
> individual mpd.

In fact, the situation is better than this: mpd searches first for a
per-user configuration file (actually not ~/.mpdconf as mpd(1) says, but
~/.mpd/mpd.conf), and then for /etc/mpd.conf. Thus, users who want
different settings for their individual mpd have only to write a
~/.mpd/mpd.conf exactly as at present. Any user who already has a
~/.mpd/mpd.conf file will not be affected by the change I propose.

> Perhaps issues with pulseaudio should be documented better in
> mpd.conf's comments, or an alternative example .mpdconf could be
> provided with the package, and mentioned in README.Debian?

There's no need: there is no issue other than one of default
configuration. We can have our cake and eat it here.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/374059

Title:
  mpd is not configured to use pulseaudio

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