Locations of WirePlumber’s files

Location of configuration files

WirePlumber’s default locations of its configuration files are the following, in order of priority:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireplumber

$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/wireplumber

$sysconfdir/wireplumber

$XDG_DATA_DIRS/wireplumber

$datadir/wireplumber

Notes:

$syscondir and $datadir refer to meson’s directory options and are hardcoded at build time

$XDG_ variables refer to the XDG Base Directory Specification

It is recommended that user specific overrides are placed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireplumber, while host-specific configuration is placed in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/wireplumber or $sysconfdir/wireplumber and distribution-provided configuration is placed in $XDG_DATA_DIRS/wireplumber or $datadir/wireplumber.

At runtime, WirePlumber will seek out the directory with the highest priority that contains the required configuration file. This setup allows a user or system administrator to effortlessly override the configuration files provided by the distribution. They can achieve this by placing a file with an identical name in a higher priority directory.

It is also possible to override the configuration directory by setting the WIREPLUMBER_CONFIG_DIR environment variable:

WIREPLUMBER_CONFIG_DIR=src/config wireplumber

WIREPLUMBER_CONFIG_DIR supports listing multiple directories, using the standard path list separator :. If multiple directories are specified, the first one has the highest priority and the last one has the lowest.

Note

When the configuration directory is overriden with WIREPLUMBER_CONFIG_DIR, the default locations are ignored and configuration files are only looked up in the directories specified by this variable.

Configuration fragments

WirePlumber also supports configuration fragments. These are configuration files that are loaded in addition to the main configuration file, allowing to override or extend the configuration without having to copy the whole file. See also the Fragments section for semantics.

Configuration fragments are always loaded from subdirectories of the main search directories that have the same name as the configuration file, with the .d suffix appended. For example, if WirePlumber loads wireplumber.conf, it will also load wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf. Note also that the fragment files need to have the .conf suffix.

When WirePlumber loads a configuration file from the default locations, it will also load all configuration fragments that are present in all of the default locations, but following the reverse order of priority. This allows configuration fragments that are installed in more system-wide locations to be overriden by the system administrator or the users.

For example, assuming WirePlumber loads wireplumber.conf, from any of the search locations, it will also locate and load the following fragments, in this order:

$datadir/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf

$XDG_DATA_DIRS/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf

$sysconfdir/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf

$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/*.conf

Within each search location that contains fragments, the individual fragment files are opened in alphanumerical order. This can be important to know, because the parsing order matters in merging. See Fragments

Note

When WIREPLUMBER_CONFIG_DIR is set, the default locations are ignored and fragment files are only looked up in the directories specified by this variable.

Location of scripts

WirePlumber’s default locations of its data files are the following, in order of priority:

$XDG_DATA_HOME/wireplumber

$XDG_DATA_DIRS/wireplumber

$datadir/wireplumber

At runtime, WirePlumber will search the directories for the highest-priority directory to contain the needed data file.

Scripts are a specific kind of “data” files and are expected to be located within a scripts subdirectory in the above data search locations. The “data” directory is a somewhat more generic path that may be used for other kinds of data files in the future.

It is also possible to override the data directory by setting the WIREPLUMBER_DATA_DIR environment variable:

WIREPLUMBER_DATA_DIR=src wireplumber

As with the default data directories, script files in particular are expected to be located within a scripts subdirectory, so in the above example the scripts would actually reside in src/scripts.

WIREPLUMBER_DATA_DIR supports listing multiple directories, using the standard path list separator :. If multiple directories are specified, the first one has the highest priority and the last one has the lowest.

Note

When WIREPLUMBER_DATA_DIR is set, the default locations are ignored and scripts are only looked up in the directories specified by this variable.

Location of modules

WirePlumber modules

WirePlumber’s default location of its modules is $libdir/wireplumber-$api_version, where $libdir is set at compile time by the build system. Typically, it ends up being /usr/lib/wireplumber-0.5 (or /usr/lib/<arch-triplet>/wireplumber-0.5 on multiarch systems)

It is possible to override this directory at runtime by setting the WIREPLUMBER_MODULE_DIR environment variable:

WIREPLUMBER_MODULE_DIR=build/modules wireplumber

WIREPLUMBER_MODULE_DIR supports listing multiple directories, using the standard path list separator :. If multiple directories are specified, the first one has the highest priority and the last one has the lowest.

Note

When WIREPLUMBER_MODULE_DIR is set, the default locations are ignored and scripts are only looked up in the directories specified by this variable.

PipeWire and SPA modules

PipeWire and SPA modules are not loaded from the same location as WirePlumber’s modules. They are loaded from the location that PipeWire loads them.

It is also possible to override these locations by using environment variables: SPA_PLUGIN_DIR and PIPEWIRE_MODULE_DIR. For more details, refer to PipeWire’s documentation.