Amarok - hunting for a boost

[Tuomas Nurmi]

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 #amarok at 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