Audacity hangs on launch if calf-plugins package is installed

[Gabriel Gugik]

Audacity hangs on launch when calf-plugins package is installed on system.

It started to happen after I installed Easyeffects, and calf-plugins is a dependency of Easyeffects.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
Package: audacity 3.4.2+dfsg-1build4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-31.31-generic 6.8.1
Uname: Linux 6.8.0-31-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Apr 26 11:33:02 2024
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/audacity
InstallationDate: Installed on 2024-04-08 (18 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS "Noble Numbat" - Daily amd64 (20240407.2)
SourcePackage: audacity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Considering calf hasn't seen a proper release in 5 years, I'm not at all surprised. Only recently have we seen any development activity start back up from them, and I'm not entirely sure where it's going.

My advise is to use lsp-plugins as opposed to calf-plugins for now.

[Gabriel Gugik (gabrielgbrgugik)]

EasyEffects (PulseEffects replacement for Pipewire) has a dependency on calf-plugins.

At the moment is impossible to remove calf-plugins without removing EasyEffects too.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

There's an open Debian bug in regards to that (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1063319), but that's a separate bug from this, though it would be justify to fix it as it affects this bug (as noted in that bug).

[Gabriel Gugik (gabrielgbrgugik)]

So, I'm going to uninstall the repo version of EasyEffects (and calf-plugins).

For now I'm going to use the Flatpak Flathub version of EasyEffects instead.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

That's fine, but I am working on an SRU (Stable Release Update) of EasyEffects since this is certainly a packaging error that I can fix (not my error, but I have a fairly big hammer).

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Gabriel,

For what it's worth, we've had some movement on LP: #2063879 which will remove calf-plugins from being a dependency of easyeffects, so that should solve the coinstallability problem and allow you to remove calf-plugins soon.

[Gabriel Gugik (gabrielgbrgugik)]

I can confirm that now Audacity is working as expected when Easyeffects is installed on the system.

Thank you for your help on this matter.