Dummy PulseAudio Debian package!

Do you really, deeply, like PulseAudio not? Do you want to prevent it running, or better, even existing on your Debian system? Does apt-get still insist on pulling it as a dependency of something else? Does it get really, really frustrating when it randomly kills your ALSA mixer setup and stops working when any app decides to start it?

Say no more!

Installation

This creates a local repository with pulseaudio .deb package that contains precisely nothing (except for symlinks to /bin/true in place of PA binaries):

1. Clone and cd the repository
2. cd pulseaudio/
3. debuild -us -uc will create the dummy packages (in the parent directory). If you don't have debuild, install it using apt-get install devscripts
4. Install the local debian repository: apt-get install local-apt-repository
5. Copy the newly created packages to your local repo: cd ..; cp pulseaudio_*.* /srv/local-apt-repository/ (you'll need sudo or other root)
6. systemctl restart local-apt-repository will reindex the packages
7. apt-get update will pull your new repo to your system's APT catalog
8. apt-get install --only-upgrade pulseaudio should now install the dummy PA version.
9. That's it ma, no pulseaudio!

Workarounds

For (depraved) stuff that really requires PulseAudio, you can install this beautiful wrapper:

https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse

Disclaimer

This will break PA-dependent stuff in weird ways, possibly with linking errors. I put it together in like 10 minutes so feel free to tell me what I did totally wrong.

Version number was carefully chosen to be a tiny bit higher than most PA versions.