Default sink and PULSE_SINK
https://crbug.com/880180 was recently filed because a recent change in Chromium made it ignore the PULSE_SINK variable when choosing the default output device.
After the change, Chromium uses as default the sink obtained by calling pa_context_get_server_info
((https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/doxygen/introspect_8h.html#a6f3bdd9982d9dec70ca5acf6ada3a9a2), which returns a
pa_server_info
struct (https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/doxygen/structpa__server__info.html) containing a default_sink_name
field (among others).
After this change, things work exactly as described in https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/DefaultDevice/, which does not mention $PULSE_SINK.
However, this appears to be in conflict with what is stated https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/FAQ/#index5h3, where it says that $PULSE_SINK is the default sink.
Prior to the change in Chromium, the default device was specified using either the empty string or the "default" string, and the sink in $PULSE_SINK was used if specified. This prompted a user to file https://crbug.com/880180, since it broke their use case.
I would like to know if this is a bug or if there is a way to get the default device using PulseAudio APIs such that the PULSE_SINK variable is taken into account.