FYI Changing property in future pipewire release

[pallaswept]

Describe the bug

Pipewire's node.passive property has changed behaviour in their master branch (currently unreleased) and its value true should become follow to retain the same behaviour in cava.

It should be a pretty simple change just this one line

cava/input/pipewire.c

Line 185 in 01bdbd5

pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_PASSIVE, "true");

But I know you are busy making changes so I didn't want to interfere with a PR. This is a future change so I'm mostly just trying to let you know in advance.

I imagine that when this change is released, there will be some time between that release and the subsequent cava release with the fix discussed here, so following is a workaround which cava users can employ in that migration period:

Just create a text file ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/cava_passive_fix.conf
With these contents:

node.rules = [
    { matches = [ { node.name = "cava"
                    node.passive = true
    } ] actions = { update-props = {
        node.passive = follow
    } } }
]

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Use pipewire built from git master
2. Use cava with active=0

Expected behavior

Cava should become inactive (idle, then suspended) when linked to an inactive source

Additional context

Upstream bug (including discussion of cava)
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/5152#note_3362157

[karlstav]

If this was just added in master wouldn't it take some time for it to trickle down to the different distributions? Stable debian releases would have the old behaviour for years right?

Wouldn't we need the config script to detect the pipewire version and then change the behaviour based on the version.

[pallaswept]

Good point. Perhaps if you'd prefer to restrict the changes to just the pipewire.c these could be useful: https://github.com/PipeWire/pipewire/blob/d47b4974ce6844784510b882d0563c8051604cc1/src/pipewire/version.h.in#L25

/** Return TRUE if the currently linked PipeWire library version is equal
 * or newer than the specified version. Since 0.3.75 */
bool pw_check_library_version(int major, int minor, int micro);

[pallaswept]

This is working OK here and shouldn't break in older versions (pardon the formatting I just threw it in there to try it out) :

--- cava-master/input/pipewire.c	2026-03-23 05:19:26.000000000 +1100
+++ cava-masterb/input/pipewire.c	2026-03-24 06:37:28.855921517 +1100
@@ -181,8 +181,12 @@
 
     if (data.cava_audio->active)
         pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_ALWAYS_PROCESS, "true");
-    else
-        pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_PASSIVE, "true");
+    else {
+        if (pw_check_library_version(1,7,0)) {
+            pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_PASSIVE, "follow");
+        }
+        else pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_PASSIVE, "true");
+    }
 
     if (data.cava_audio->virtual_node)
         pw_properties_set(props, PW_KEY_NODE_VIRTUAL, "true");