Liliana Marie Prikler schreef op zo 29-05-2022 om 18:39 [+0200]:
> As far as I can see however, minetest-sound-core is a slightly
> different kind of package though.  Like gnulib or GNOME's libgd, the
> authors want it to be included as source code in the target mod.

IMO those need to be unbundled as well because of standard reasons for
unbundling.  Though for gnulib there is the complication that some
gnulib-using software makes some important modifications to their
gnulib (e.g. guile modifies lib/localcharset.c).

> I don't know how this makes a difference in Minetest mods, but there is a
> chance it might.  At the very least, it does not appear as though
> minetest-sound-core is itself a mod (or is it?).

mod.conf is missing, so it's not a mod by itself, from Minetest's
perspective (*).

Some differences though:

There exist (non-bundled) API mods, e.g. 
<https://content.minetest.net/packages/TestificateMods/climate_api/>.
Minetest also has a standard and well-functioning package manager.

As such, it seems to me that it could conceivably be turned into an API
mod.  Maybe if we explain nicely at
<https://github.com/mt-mods/basic_materials/issues/4>, upstream would
agree?  Not sure though.

(*) However, Vivien's substitutions have effectively turned it into a
mod!

Greetings,
Maxime.