sf2 is the most commonly used soundfont format. Fluidsynth also supports some extra formats sf3 and dls which are not as popular.
- To support
sf3 format, fluidsynth depends on sndfile. sndfile so file is around 0.5 MB (measured on pygame-ce 2.5.6 linux)
- Removing sndfile so file would also remove the dependency on vorbisenc so file which is around 0.7 MB. Together, the removal saves around 1.2 MB size per wheel (uncompressed).
- The removal probably doesn't affect anyone or break code.
set_soundfont is pygame-ce API added somewhat recently. Windows (as of pygame-ce 2.5.6) doesn't support set_soundfont at all. We could just document this limitation now and then wait to see if anyone complains or requests support for it (which is unlikely)
EDIT: dls format support doesn't seem to rely on sndfile