Removing gstreamer-vaapi causes pop-desktop to be removed

[MathieuDuponchelle]

Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):

Unknown, third party reported at http://gstreamer-devel.966125.n4.nabble.com/Something-may-have-went-wrong-in-setting-Up-GStreamer-environment-for-developing-td4696792.html, presumably latest

Related Application and/or Package Version (run apt policy $PACKAGE NAME):

gstreamer-vaapi, pop-desktop

Issue/Bug Description:

Similar to https://github.com/pop-os/desktop/issues/52 , gstreamer-vaapi is listed as a hard dependency of pop-desktop, making it impossible to cleanly remove it

Steps to reproduce (if you know):

sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi

Expected behavior:

Uninstalling gstreamer-vaapi should not uninstall pop-desktop, these plugins are known to have stability issues and it may be necessary to uninstall them for GStreamer to work properly (using software decoders)

[sdroege]

Ir should probably use Recommends instead of Depends for situations like this where it's not actually a hard dependency of anything but "usually good to have".

[jacobgkau]

Seems like this (along with #52) may be duplicates of https://github.com/pop-os/desktop/issues/49 requesting less dependencies for pop-desktop. I'm not sure a separate issue for each dependency adds much value to the overall conversation.

For gstreamer-vaapi specifically, it was added in this PR: https://github.com/pop-os/desktop/pull/33 According to that PR, not having it installed can lead to undesirable battery drain due to the fallback CPU decoding.

@MathieuDuponchelle Can you please expand on the "stability issues" you are seeing? Is this on System76 hardware or third-party hardware?

[MathieuDuponchelle]

@jacobgkau I don't have more information than what's in the mail thread I linked, but I assume this is on third-party hardware.

[ShockWave08]

@jacobgkau Its on third party hardware not on system76 hardware. Dell Pavilion 5000 series.

@MathieuDuponchelle thanks much.

[thejonjohn]

Just popping in to add some extra context here. I also attempted to remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi but did not do it because it was going to remove pop-desktop. The thing that led me to try removing gstreamer1.0-vaapi was this comment:

https://github.com/antimof/UxPlay/issues/32#issuecomment-777177543

Which is a suggestion about working around a gstreamer segmentation fault when trying to use RpiPlay or UxPlay (airplay type server). I am running on System76 hardware (lemur pro) and I do experience a segmentation fault coming from gstreamer when trying to airplay from my ipad to RpiPlay or UxPlay software. I realize of course that the segfault is not the responsibility of pop-os, but I just wanted to add some context as to why people might be wanting to remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi. I can't confirm that it fixes my segfault because I did not actually remove it (didn't want to lose my pop-desktop...)