GSoc and Amarok

[Bart Cerneels]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 04:46, Nikhil Marathe <nsm.nikhil at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 2:28 AM, Lucas Lira Gomes <x8lucas8x at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm interested in working for KDE in GSoc(Google Summer of Code) and
>> Amarok is one of the applications I use most in my desktop. So, I had a
>> look at the ideas that Amarok developers suggests for this year and the
>> Project: Self Contained Collection seems to fit most in my current skills,
>> but that isn't enough information in the project description about what
>> really should be done. I wonder if somebody can give me more information
>> about this project.
>
> The aim is that devices like USB drives or n900s are frequently
> removed and connected.
> When connected I would like Amarok to treat it as a collection. But
> since its a temporary device
> it doesn't make sense to store persistent collection data like ratings
> in the local collection. Rather if it
> is stored with the data itself, then it will work on any computer
> (which runs a version of Amarok supporting this) and
> you can have persistent collection information that seamlessly merges
> with Amarok, but is ignored by other players.
>
> Ideally this should work on any writable medium not necessarily a pen
> drive (although that is what it will be in 99% of cases) :)
> I believe not all the features used by the normal amarok collection
> backed by MySQL will work with SQLite, but this and other details
> are for you and the mentor to work out. This is what you will do in
> the planning stages (and if you want to create a great proposal, you
> will do some of that even now).
>
> Amarok is huge and can be a bit daunting, so feel free to ask for help
> as Valorie mentioned. Good luck.
>
> Nikhil

I've clarified the project proposal [1]. I should not have mentioned a
specific implementation detail like SQlite but rather the goal. The
user should be clearly aware that the tracks on for instance a network
share. Rather then suddenly hiding those tracks from the main SQL
collection I would rather like to see a separate collection item for
the network share. A lot user friendly as I'm sure everyone will
agree.

The USB mass-storage with sqlite file included can also be made into a
GSoC project if there are any candidates, but I think [1] is higher
priority.

Sorry for the confusion state of the proposal on the wiki. Should be
clarified now.

Bart

[1] http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2011/Ideas#Project:_Self_Contained_Collection