vhost-device-sound: Add GStreamer audio backend support #876

nicholasdezai · 2025-09-16T01:06:44Z

Summary of the PR

This change adds GStreamer audio backend support.

Since the Rust bindings for GStreamer rely on the underlying C libraries, this change introduces additional build dependencies. On Debian/Ubuntu systems, at least libgstreamer1.0-dev and libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev are required.

Requirements

Before submitting your PR, please make sure you addressed the following
requirements:

All commits in this PR have Signed-Off-By trailers (with
git commit -s), and the commit message has max 60 characters for the
summary and max 75 characters for each description line.
All added/changed functionality has a corresponding unit/integration
test.
All added/changed public-facing functionality has entries in the "Upcoming
Release" section of CHANGELOG.md (if no such section exists, please create one).
Any newly added unsafe code is properly documented.

dorindabassey · 2025-09-17T09:07:05Z

the build is failing because gstreamer-base-1.0 is missing from the build environment, looks like we need to update the rust-vmm container with gstreamer.

  pkg-config exited with status code 1
  > PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_SYSTEM_CFLAGS=1 pkg-config --libs --cflags gstreamer-base-1.0 'gstreamer-base-1.0 >= 1.20'
  The system library `gstreamer-base-1.0` required by crate `gstreamer-base-sys` was not found.
  The file `gstreamer-base-1.0.pc` needs to be installed and the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable must contain its parent directory.
  The PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable is not set.

MatiasVara · 2025-09-19T13:30:53Z

the build is failing because gstreamer-base-1.0 is missing from the build environment, looks like we need to update the rust-vmm container with gstreamer.

  pkg-config exited with status code 1
  > PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_SYSTEM_CFLAGS=1 pkg-config --libs --cflags gstreamer-base-1.0 'gstreamer-base-1.0 >= 1.20'
  The system library `gstreamer-base-1.0` required by crate `gstreamer-base-sys` was not found.
  The file `gstreamer-base-1.0.pc` needs to be installed and the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable must contain its parent directory.
  The PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable is not set.

right, I just did it at rust-vmm/rust-vmm-ci#190

stefano-garzarella · 2025-09-22T07:03:07Z

@nicholasdezai we just merged #881 that should bring @MatiasVara changes to add GStreamer deps to our CI container, please rebase this PR.

nicholasdezai · 2025-09-23T06:19:54Z

I submitted a PR to rust-vmm-container to add the missing GStreamer dependencies
(gstreamer1.0-plugins-base and gstreamer1.0-plugins-good) required for running
the GStreamer backend tests in CI.

stefano-garzarella · 2025-09-24T15:24:16Z

Please rebase this PR on main and keep dep updates (e.g. rust-vmm-ci submodule) in separate commits.

stefano-garzarella

Great, thanks for working on this and preparing the container for the CI!

I left some comments, in general I'd avoid unwrap()/expect(). I mean t's fine for the lock or something that should not happen, but for example you have in some places .ok_or(Error::StreamWithIdNotFound(stream_id))? and in others .expect("Can not find stream in stream_in.");. Why? (I didn't look the entire code, so maybe there is a reason).

vhost-device-i2c/src/main.rs

Cargo.lock

vhost-device-sound/src/audio_backends/gstreamer.rs

nicholasdezai · 2025-09-27T13:45:41Z

I have improved the error handling in the new commit. I hope the error handling makes more sense now

MatiasVara · 2025-10-01T13:41:03Z

I have tried both playback and recording. Both operations seem working.

stefano-garzarella · 2025-10-01T15:42:35Z

@dorindabassey @epilys PTAL

dorindabassey · 2025-10-01T15:48:47Z

@dorindabassey @epilys PTAL

PR LGTM last time I checked, but I’ll do a more thorough review later(tomorrow).

MatiasVara

LGTM!

stefano-garzarella · 2025-10-01T15:54:38Z

@nicholasdezai please in the meantime rebase this on main, I guess you can remove the rust-vmm-ci commit since dependabot recently update it IIRC.

vhost-device-sound/src/audio_backends/gstreamer.rs

vhost-device-sound/src/stream.rs

dorindabassey

Thank you @nicholasdezai for the work on this PR, I added just a few comments.

vhost-device-sound/src/audio_backends/gstreamer.rs

dorindabassey · 2025-10-03T08:37:37Z

Hi @nicholasdezai , I tested this on Fedora42 with kernel-6.14.0 I don't get any audio using the gstreamer backend, and running a simple aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Left.wav is stuck. attaching the logs incase it looks familiar.
RUST LOG debug vhost device.txt
btw, what image are you using to test?

dorindabassey · 2025-10-03T09:01:37Z

you also need to update the readme with the new backend

     --backend <BACKEND>
            audio backend to be used [possible values: null, pipewire, alsa]

nicholasdezai · 2025-10-03T09:40:09Z

I’m testing with Debian 13 (trixie), kernel 6.15.5.

MatiasVara · 2025-10-03T12:27:57Z

I just tried with qemu from master(29b77c1a2db2), Linux v6.16-rc1, and GStreamer 1.24.0, and it seems working.

dorindabassey · 2025-10-06T10:24:35Z

I used QEMU from master(517e9b4862cc), gstreamer 1.24.0, kernel 6.16.9, f42, also tried debian-13-nocloud-amd64.qcow2 image with gstreamer 1.24.0 i got no audio, but after updating to 1.24.13 it works with the debian image, so probably not an issue with the backend.

Add gstreamer backend. Add gstreamer-related crates used in the vhost-device-sound module This affects only the vhost-device-sound module, and updates the following dependencies: - dependency-name: gstreamer dependency-version: 0.24.2 - dependency-name: gstreamer-app dependency-version: 0.24.2 - dependency-name: gstreamer-audio dependency-version: 0.24.2 Signed-off-by: nicholasdezai <[email protected]>

nicholasdezai requested review from dorindabassey, stsquad, vireshk, stefano-garzarella and epilys as code owners September 16, 2025 01:06

nicholasdezai force-pushed the gst branch from f388952 to 25b41fe Compare September 16, 2025 01:08

nicholasdezai force-pushed the gst branch from 25b41fe to fa75522 Compare September 19, 2025 15:09

nicholasdezai force-pushed the gst branch from fa75522 to 3c9c17b Compare September 24, 2025 14:33

nicholasdezai force-pushed the gst branch 3 times, most recently from 121daab to b436032 Compare September 26, 2025 00:45

stefano-garzarella reviewed Sep 26, 2025

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vhost-device-sound: Add GStreamer audio backend support #876

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Summary of the PR

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