Welcome Tuomas. Thanks for you you energy to give a new boost to Amarok.
Here are some thoughts, as I spent quite some time trying to make the
first QT5 port:
- the hardest thing to port from QT4 to QT5 were the plugins, as they
were based on QTScript. I even tried to recreate it the script engine at
QT5. But it's too much work. Not to mention that there might be security
concerns. Maybe we should accept it, and completely drop the old
scripting engine. And, if there's enough interest, think of a new one,
based on QML
- a port from QT5 to QT6 doesn't seem very traumatic as it was from QT4
to QT5. I believe this should have high priority
- as far I last saw, MariaDB-embeded was to reach end-of-life this year.
Alternatives should be discussed immediately
Best,
Pedro
On 2024-03-23 14:16, Tuomas Nurmi wrote:
Hi everyone,
after last weekend's email, I've received encouragement, wise words and
various other forms of support from multiple people (Thank you!). I applied
for the developer access, which was granted, which is great.
I've updated the changelog today ( https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/
blob/master/ChangeLog ) to include some information on the changes since 2.9
(released in 2018).
In the following days/weeks, I plan to triage a number of Amarok bugs on
bugs.kde.org, and try and see if a 2.9.76 (alpha2) release can be organized in
April. If this succeeds, goal could be a beta or two and then hopefully the
long-awaited 3.0, maybe in Summer.
The focus on the road up to 3.0 should probably be on fixing bugs and trying to
ensure that everything keeps working with recent versions of required
libraries. There probably shouldn't be introduction of completely new strings
or features before 3.0 (Restoring some more functionalities lost during the
KF5 porting might be feasible. However, all my favourite functionalities are
there already, but I'll keep my eyes open in case something important comes
up).
After a KF5 based version is released, one can assess how much effort will a
Qt6/KF6 version require (fortunately, a notable amount of work to remove usage
of deprecated methods has been done during the last years, so it might not be
totally overwhelming)
Wishing you a nice Saturday, again!
Cheers
Tuomas
Tuomas Nurmi kirjoitti lauantaina 16. maaliskuuta 2024 13.00.38 EET:
Hi everyone,
according to statistics, I used Amarok to listen to a total of 111 days of
music last year. That's why I thought I'd try gathering some attention and
stirring up some discussion to get a little boost for its development
progress.
The current version 2.9.71, "3.0 Alpha" was released in February 2021.
However, there has been a notable amount of development going on since, the
current git state including additionally e.g. some functionality lost
initially between KDE4 and KF5 port replaced, fixes for crashes, support for
newer ffmpeg versions and so on. There's also (popular?) demand for a new
version, visible on e.g. the issue
https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/ issues/4
The fact that there hasn't been a new version tagged since also causes some
problems and disinformation to arise, with distributions packaging git at
various dates and existence of bugs depending on the git checkout date and
not the actual version number (see e.g. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?
id=481384 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444408 )
Merge requests receive quite limited attention, and take a long time to get
merged. E.g. my MR!53 https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/
merge_requests/53 has been waiting in its current state since May 2023.
The MR freshens up the codebase a bit (without altering functionality yet)
and has received a considerable amount of testing (last year, 111 days of
playing music by me; also other people have chimed in in the MR
conversations). (Another merge request that does some similar work on e.g.
OSD related functionality is pending at
https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/ merge_requests/55 - it disables
some things on Wayland, where the
corresponding functionality cannot be implemented with KF5 libraries, I
believe; I've been planning to give the remaining comments some more
attention after the !53 is merged) There's also a recent simple crash fix
MR!59 by me pending at
https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/merge_requests/59
I also want to mention the recent nice work by Mihkel Tõnnov, whose MR!57
https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/merge_requests/57 fixes build
with recently released TagLib 2 and MR!60
https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/ amarok/-/merge_requests/60 which ports
things away from deprecated kcoreaddons_desktop_to_json.
I tried applying for a KDE developer access back in late 2020, but didn't
get it back then; I didn't refer to any supporter then though. I guess I
could try again sometime if needed.
In addition to code, I've had a look at the bugs at bugs.kde.org. There are
643 open bugs at the moment. However, with a quick assessment, I figure
somewhere between 200-400 could be easily closed as they're discussing a
functionality removed since, or have otherwise become outdated. Having a new
released version would naturally be nice here, too, but I've been planning
to triage some of the most obviously outdated ones sometime soon.
------
So, to summarize, I'd say
- Amarok is a very nice music player and (has been one for more than two
full decades)
- It would benefit from more hands testing and reviewing the pending pull
requests on invent.kde.org (no special requirements, aside from the skills
to build Amarok from git - shout out to everyone who has been doing it -
you rock!)
- It would be awesome to get some of the pending pull requests merged (KDE
developer access required)
- People want a 3.0
- but tagging and releasing of a 2.9.72 version would already go a long
way, would be awesome and would help with backlog and history [or 2.9.76,
as some distributions have been using 2.9.75 as version number for git
builds] (KDE developer access and some confidence and extra understanding
of related processes required).
- I'm planning to do a spring cleanup on bugs.kde.org sometime soon
- If someone wants to sponsor my application for a developer account, should
I file one, give me a holler (probably should be a well-known Amarok or KDE
contributor, or a famous rock star or something similar)
I'm here on mailing list, on #ama...@libera.chat and monitoring https://
invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok (please do inform me if I'm missing some
relevant forum), open to discussion and eager to keep on contributing.
I'm happy to hear any comments (and should I get none, I guess I could use
that on dev access application, too, to demonstrate that there actually is
nobody around to sponsor it, which is also OK)
Wishing a nice Saturday to those who celebrate!
Cheers
Tuomas Nurmi
(First appearing on Amarok Changelog at notes for 1.4.4, released Nov 2006)
Now playing - Amarok: Status Quo - The Party Ain't Over Yet
