> The stack is clean. The interfaces are better. But the expectations are still stuck in 2012.
The interfaces are absolutely not better, they're a bunch of ~~undocumented~~ C preprocessor macros that hide a pit of complexity and indirection. Pulse is mature enough that you can figure out how to interface with it, pipewire has a handful of examples and some reference documentation that doesn't make sense if you don't already know what you're looking for. Good luck if those examples don't fit nicely into your existing applications' architectures.
Pipewire is very impressive as an achievement, but the work needs to be put in to make it mature enough as a software project (meaning: documentation and well typed interfaces) before existing software can work with it.
The architecture may well be better equipped to provide stable and elegant interfaces to complex media routing problems in application software. But I couldn't tell you if that's true or not, because it's sparsely documented. An undiscoverable API is a nonexistent one.
edit: I wrote this ignorantly before looking back at the pipewire docs. They've improved since I last looked, but I still find the docs lacking (comparable to Apple's docs, which is not a compliment) and the overall interface design of Pipewire a massive challenge to grasp. It might be better, but I don't know. The last time I tried to implement direct support for pipewire in a Linux app I gave up because of its design and lack of useful documentation.
The interfaces are absolutely not better, they're a bunch of ~~undocumented~~ C preprocessor macros that hide a pit of complexity and indirection. Pulse is mature enough that you can figure out how to interface with it, pipewire has a handful of examples and some reference documentation that doesn't make sense if you don't already know what you're looking for. Good luck if those examples don't fit nicely into your existing applications' architectures.
Pipewire is very impressive as an achievement, but the work needs to be put in to make it mature enough as a software project (meaning: documentation and well typed interfaces) before existing software can work with it.
The architecture may well be better equipped to provide stable and elegant interfaces to complex media routing problems in application software. But I couldn't tell you if that's true or not, because it's sparsely documented. An undiscoverable API is a nonexistent one.
edit: I wrote this ignorantly before looking back at the pipewire docs. They've improved since I last looked, but I still find the docs lacking (comparable to Apple's docs, which is not a compliment) and the overall interface design of Pipewire a massive challenge to grasp. It might be better, but I don't know. The last time I tried to implement direct support for pipewire in a Linux app I gave up because of its design and lack of useful documentation.