Hi all,
This message is mostly aimed towards package maintainers, since one of the discussions at wineconf last year was that package maintainers would like to hear in advance about changing dependencies.
Wine's DirectSound implementation will, in the next release or the release after that, rely on OpenAL, the recommended library for linux or bsd's is openal-soft, and preferably a recent version, as old versions might miss certain experimental extensions that dsound will need. Mac users shouldn't need an external openal library, since it has its own openal implementation.
Without openal at compile-time, dsound will still build, but report no sound devices found. Some games or other applications may refuse to run if no dsound devices are found, so its recommended that you build with openal. If openal is compiled in, but missing at runtime, dsound.dll will refuse to load, which probably means most games will not run either.
Cheers, Maarten