Hi,
I would like to understand why some packages related to pipewire and camera device management are not pre-installed. They seem to be useful packages, but maybe they’re not quite ready for optimal integration?
I am referring to:
pipewire-v4l2
pipewire-plugin-libcamera
gstreamer-libcamera
libcamera-v4l2
I’m not sure if they can all be installed at once: for example, pipewire-v4l2 might conflict with libcamera-v4l2, while pipewire-plugin-libcamera might conflict with gstreamer-libcamera if pipewire-gstreamer is also installed. In short, I would say that the situation deserves clarity.
Yes, I tried to install them because of a issue I had with video recording, but then I uninstalled them again because during debugging we realized that the issue was not due to the lack of these packages. In this way I wanted to respect the upstream selection made by Fedora. There is no conflict issue during installation because they are all packages that do different things. But I’m not sure if there won’t be problems during use: for example, if both pipewire-v4l2 and libcamera-v4l2 are installed, which of the two intercepts the call to v4l2 first? The decision to go back to the starting point (without these packages) is because there is a work-in-progress to better integrate pipewire on Fedora, so I assume that if they haven’t installed them it’s because they’re not ready yet (or maybe there’s some other reason I can’t figure out).
I would be surprised if these packages break anything just by being installed.
If they do I would raise a bug against them as that would be a surprise.
Probably the term “conflict” is not the appropriate one. I didn’t mean a conflict between packages, but rather an overlap of features that can cause issues (assuming I understand correctly how those software works). Anyway, beyond that, my priority is to understand why they are not installed by default.