Amarok - hunting for a boost

[Tuomas Nurmi]

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 #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