Two session-transition stalls found live on a SteamOS Deck host, one cause:
the pipeline retry loop couldn't tell a wait-it-out failure from a
retry-now-and-it-works one.
- Gamescope first-frame race: a PipeWire stream connected while gamescope
re-initializes its headless takeover negotiates a format, reaches
Streaming, and never receives a buffer — while a fresh connect delivers
within ~0.5 s. Every gamescope bring-up ate the full 10 s first-frame
budget on attempt 1 (17 s bring-ups; KWin: 1.2 s). The retry loop's FIRST
attempt now waits 2.5 s (Capturer::next_frame_within), so the reconnect
that fixes the race happens at ~3 s. Later attempts keep the patient 10 s
— the documented 30-60 s Big Picture cold start still fits the budget.
- Capture-loss rebuild vs session switch: the rebuild loop re-detects the
active session between build_pipeline_with_retry calls, but each call
burned 8 attempts (~13 s) against a compositor that no longer exists (a
Desktop→Gaming switch spent 13 of its 27 s retrying gone-KWin). The
capture-loss path now passes max_attempts=2, turning the outer loop into
~1 s detect-and-retry cycles that follow the box to the new session.
The resize path's direct build_pipeline call keeps the default budget (no
retry wrapper there to absorb an early bail).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
enricobuehler
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