Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Dev

Status Question: Is current SVN useable?

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reza at reza

Jan 18, 2008, 2:19 AM

Post #1 of 20 (2770 views)
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Status Question: Is current SVN useable?

It's been forever since the last real release of mythtv (other than for
adding schedules direct support), and thing have been breaking in MythTV
that have not been address (from my understaning). For example,
mythweather.

It seems like there's a lot of work underway for the next release, but
I'm getting a bit anxious, and my friends vista/media center looks
really nice. So my question is :

- is the current svn stable enough to use now?
- if not, how long till it will be, or how long till the next major
release (guesstimation)
- are there any killer features comming down the pipeline?

I basically need to decide if I'm going to stay with mythtv or jump
ship. I've been using MythtTV forever (5+ years), and have been happy,
but it just seems that media center has caught up, and with their
plugins (commercial-skip, real-time streaming ala slingbox,
web-interface), support for Amazon's unbox, and the slated support for
the HDPC-20 make me really question staying with MythTV...

Thanks,
Reza

p.s. please CC me directly if possible.
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simon at koala

Jan 18, 2008, 3:40 AM

Post #2 of 20 (2673 views)
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Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

Reza Naima wrote:
> It's been forever since the last real release of mythtv (other than for
> adding schedules direct support), and thing have been breaking in MythTV
> that have not been address (from my understaning). For example,
> mythweather.
>
> It seems like there's a lot of work underway for the next release, but
> I'm getting a bit anxious, and my friends vista/media center looks
> really nice. So my question is :
>
> - is the current svn stable enough to use now?
> - if not, how long till it will be, or how long till the next major
> release (guesstimation)
> - are there any killer features comming down the pipeline?
>
> I basically need to decide if I'm going to stay with mythtv or jump
> ship. I've been using MythtTV forever (5+ years), and have been happy,
> but it just seems that media center has caught up, and with their
> plugins (commercial-skip, real-time streaming ala slingbox,
> web-interface), support for Amazon's unbox, and the slated support for
> the HDPC-20 make me really question staying with MythTV...
>
apart from weather, the whole lot has been usable forever.
every now and then something breaks and it takes a day or two to resolve.
but i have run svn (and before that cvs) in a production environment
(ie. this is the only way i can watch tv in my bedroom) for a long time now

some may say that that is foolish, but it works for me.
--
simon

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kormoc at gmail

Jan 18, 2008, 10:27 AM

Post #3 of 20 (2671 views)
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Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Jan 18, 2008 2:19 AM, Reza Naima <reza [at] reza> wrote:
> It's been forever since the last real release of mythtv (other than for
> adding schedules direct support), and thing have been breaking in MythTV
> that have not been address (from my understaning). For example,
> mythweather.
>
> It seems like there's a lot of work underway for the next release, but
> I'm getting a bit anxious, and my friends vista/media center looks
> really nice. So my question is :
>
> - is the current svn stable enough to use now?
> - if not, how long till it will be, or how long till the next major
> release (guesstimation)
> - are there any killer features comming down the pipeline?
>
> I basically need to decide if I'm going to stay with mythtv or jump
> ship. I've been using MythtTV forever (5+ years), and have been happy,
> but it just seems that media center has caught up, and with their
> plugins (commercial-skip, real-time streaming ala slingbox,
> web-interface), support for Amazon's unbox, and the slated support for
> the HDPC-20 make me really question staying with MythTV...
>
> Thanks,
> Reza
>
> p.s. please CC me directly if possible.

MythWeather was fully rewritten to fix these sort of issues in the
future. It's not that it wasn't addressed, it was in the correct way
that can't be back ported to stable. That's just the nature of
development.

What is current svn? the revision 10 minutes ago or the one 10 minutes
from now? The entire point of svn is it changes all the time, so it's
a crap shoot if it'll be stable enough for you or not. I find it
stable, but as always, ymmv, and only you can decide if it's stable
enough for you.

There's no way to know. It's up to Issac and he hasn't made any public
announcements, and thus, it's all up in the air.

Killer features? Multirec? MythWeb's flash streaming? MythWeb's video
overhaul? new mythweather?

Honestly, I'm not rather happy with the tone of your email. It comes
across as a slightly blackmail style tone. "Help me or else I won't
use your free product!". I really find that tone disrespectful of all
the time and energy people have put into the product that you have
used for 5+ years for free. If media center is better for you, then
fine, but don't try to leverage it for special treatment...
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willyboyd at gmail

Jan 18, 2008, 10:48 AM

Post #4 of 20 (2663 views)
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Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

Funny, I didn't get the impression at all the Reza's criticism was an
attempt to leverage for special treatment.

Reza, to actually answer your question, SVN has actually been quite
stable lately. You might watch out because there was a big check-in
for multi-rec on DVB cards lately, but otherwise I haven't had much
trouble in the past several months. The key is to just keep good
watch of the -Dev and -Commits lists and stay a few days behind the
edge (IMO). If there's a major bug introduced usually someone finds
it and either fixes or complains eventually. If you into tinkering
(and having used MythTV for 5 years, I'm thinking you are), I'd say
give it a go.

Getting defensive when someone criticizes a free, OSS project can be
kind of ironic. I get that users can't complain too much, as it's
free and doesn't cost them anything. We say we don't care if you
dislike it, it's free, go somewhere else. And I agree with that. But
to get all bent about it, means you actually DO care. If' it's free,
what does it matter if someone criticizes it? Again, it costs you
nothing. No one loses business or anything. No need to get your
feelings hurt.

Now I'll add a big caveat that I haven't known Reza's comments or any
history on the list, so if's there's precedence for such an attitude,
then disregard what I've said. Just an observation.
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kormoc at gmail

Jan 18, 2008, 11:23 AM

Post #5 of 20 (2668 views)
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Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Jan 18, 2008 10:48 AM, Willy Boyd <willyboyd [at] gmail> wrote:
> Getting defensive when someone criticizes a free, OSS project can be
> kind of ironic. I get that users can't complain too much, as it's
> free and doesn't cost them anything. We say we don't care if you
> dislike it, it's free, go somewhere else. And I agree with that. But
> to get all bent about it, means you actually DO care. If' it's free,
> what does it matter if someone criticizes it? Again, it costs you
> nothing. No one loses business or anything. No need to get your
> feelings hurt.
>
> Now I'll add a big caveat that I haven't known Reza's comments or any
> history on the list, so if's there's precedence for such an attitude,
> then disregard what I've said. Just an observation.

This is a development list for development realted issues. None of his
points were development related save for the "Is svn stable" which has
been addressed time and time again on the list and a simple search
would have found many answers already.

The reason why I felt it was sorta blackmailish would be bacuse
there's a big difference to me between "What's the current status of
the project" (which is also covered in the wiki to some extent) and
"If the project isn't making big enough steps, I (as a user) is going
to leave it for another project", especially when it's on the
development list.

What positive affect does the 'threat' have on the message he was
conveying? Why put that in at all?
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jerrymr at gmail

Jan 18, 2008, 11:38 AM

Post #6 of 20 (2665 views)
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Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Jan 18, 2008 2:23 PM, Rob Smith <kormoc [at] gmail> wrote:

> "If the project isn't making big enough steps, I (as a user) is going
> to leave it for another project"

Media Center, you is my woman now.

-jm'with apologies to Porgy & Bess'r

stuart at tase

Jan 18, 2008, 12:05 PM

Post #7 of 20 (2681 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Friday 18 January 2008 18:48:35 Willy Boyd wrote:
> If' it's free,
> what does it matter if someone criticizes it? Again, it costs you
> nothing. No one loses business or anything. No need to get your
> feelings hurt.

It costs all of the devs their free time, it may be free to the end users but
it's not free to us. We choose to work on mythtv without payment, must we be
immune to criticism as a well? It's more natural to have the opposite
reaction, if you give up your time for nothing in a way which benefits
others, it's a slap in the face to be criticised.

Personally I might expect criticism to come with a paycheck. If I'm being paid
to do a job then the employer has a right to voice their opinion. However if
they are getting the product for nothing then it's surely common courtesy not
to complain?

As it happens, we all live in the real world and know that some people are
just rude enough to complain no matter what. I suspect they would complain
even if they were paid to use mythtv. We've usually got pretty thick skins
but occasionally someone does something that we just can't ignore.

In this case Reza, someone who to my knowledge has never made a material
contribution to mythtv, came to the list announcing his intention to ditch
mythtv - that's nothing more than trolling. We really don't care if he uses
another product (really!), what upset us is that he didn't leave quietly. He
decided to come to our development list and make his 'threat', he imagines
that we value his loyalty so much that we'll all work even harder (without
pay) to keep him.
--
Stuart Morgan
_______________________________________________
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ebenblues at yahoo

Jan 18, 2008, 1:00 PM

Post #8 of 20 (2663 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

> In this case Reza, someone who to my knowledge has never made a
material
> contribution to mythtv, came to the list announcing his intention to
ditch
> mythtv - that's nothing more than trolling. We really don't care if he
uses
> another product (really!), what upset us is that he didn't leave
quietly. He
> decided to come to our development list and make his 'threat', he
imagines
> that we value his loyalty so much that we'll all work even harder
(without
> pay) to keep him.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about Reza's motives in writing that email. Anyway...although I agree Reza's tone was not great, I think a better way to respond (rather than getting defensive and shunning him), is to refer him to the 0.21 release notes wiki page and the wishlist page so he can see the kinds of features that are in the works. It's possible he is just being a troll, but I wouldn't write him off as one from that one email. I've found there's almost always something valuable that can be extracted from user feedback.

0.21 Release Notes:
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes_-_0.21

Feature Wishlist:
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Feature_Wishlist

James

------------------------------
"The humble learn the fastest because they don't waste time on defending a false image."

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eric.bosch at comcast

Jan 19, 2008, 11:40 AM

Post #9 of 20 (2663 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

Reza,
I have been running SVN for quite some time now, and has immensely
improved from the last official release. Mythweather has been fixed,
plus other countless fixes/features added. You should try it. I too
have been using for years now. Occaisionally, there is some bug
introduced into SVN, but they often are fixed within a few days. At
this current time, I am not having any detectable issues, as of svn
version 0.21_pre15470.

Reza Naima wrote:
> It's been forever since the last real release of mythtv (other than for
> adding schedules direct support), and thing have been breaking in MythTV
> that have not been address (from my understaning). For example,
> mythweather.
>
> It seems like there's a lot of work underway for the next release, but
> I'm getting a bit anxious, and my friends vista/media center looks
> really nice. So my question is :
>
> - is the current svn stable enough to use now?
> - if not, how long till it will be, or how long till the next major
> release (guesstimation)
> - are there any killer features comming down the pipeline?
>
> I basically need to decide if I'm going to stay with mythtv or jump
> ship. I've been using MythtTV forever (5+ years), and have been happy,
> but it just seems that media center has caught up, and with their
> plugins (commercial-skip, real-time streaming ala slingbox,
> web-interface), support for Amazon's unbox, and the slated support for
> the HDPC-20 make me really question staying with MythTV...
>
> Thanks,
> Reza
>
> p.s. please CC me directly if possible.
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
>
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daniel.akerud at gmail

Jan 19, 2008, 5:14 PM

Post #10 of 20 (2630 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Jan 19, 2008 8:40 PM, Eric Bosch <eric.bosch [at] comcast> wrote:

> Reza,
> I have been running SVN for quite some time now, and has immensely
> improved from the last official release. Mythweather has been fixed,
> plus other countless fixes/features added. You should try it. I too
> have been using for years now. Occaisionally, there is some bug
> introduced into SVN, but they often are fixed within a few days. At
> this current time, I am not having any detectable issues, as of svn
> version 0.21_pre15470.

Although I only use LiveTV, watch recorded shows and mythweb, in my
experience SVN is *even more* stable. I actually had some nagging
reproducible bugs that disappeared when I upgraded from 0.20 (Ubuntu
packages) to SVN (Mythbuntu weakly packages). And instead you get awesome
deinterlacer ( Bob2x < YADIF =) ), and other goodies.

/D

bill at bbqninja

Jan 20, 2008, 1:10 AM

Post #11 of 20 (2627 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On 1/19/08, Stuart Morgan <stuart [at] tase> wrote:
> On Friday 18 January 2008 18:48:35 Willy Boyd wrote:
> > If' it's free,
> > what does it matter if someone criticizes it? Again, it costs you
> > nothing. No one loses business or anything. No need to get your
> > feelings hurt.
>
> It costs all of the devs their free time, it may be free to the end users but
> it's not free to us. We choose to work on mythtv without payment, must we be
> immune to criticism as a well? It's more natural to have the opposite
> reaction, if you give up your time for nothing in a way which benefits
> others, it's a slap in the face to be criticised.
>
> Personally I might expect criticism to come with a paycheck. If I'm being paid
> to do a job then the employer has a right to voice their opinion. However if
> they are getting the product for nothing then it's surely common courtesy not
> to complain?
>
> As it happens, we all live in the real world and know that some people are
> just rude enough to complain no matter what. I suspect they would complain
> even if they were paid to use mythtv. We've usually got pretty thick skins
> but occasionally someone does something that we just can't ignore.
>
> In this case Reza, someone who to my knowledge has never made a material
> contribution to mythtv, came to the list announcing his intention to ditch
> mythtv - that's nothing more than trolling. We really don't care if he uses
> another product (really!), what upset us is that he didn't leave quietly. He
> decided to come to our development list and make his 'threat', he imagines
> that we value his loyalty so much that we'll all work even harder (without
> pay) to keep him.

He likely won't toot his own horn, but you do know that this is the
guy who released the first opensource hacking of the Rio Receivers (In
fact I can't see his name without thinking of them) and started an
entire community around open source network audio device development,
right? He's not a random user who's never done anything for "open
source."

Your attitude is very old school, antagonistic, and a big part of what
people refer to as the open source "problem."
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stuart at tase

Jan 20, 2008, 3:17 AM

Post #12 of 20 (2644 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Sunday 20 January 2008 09:10:25 Bill Williamson wrote:
> He likely won't toot his own horn, but you do know that this is the
> guy who released the first opensource hacking of the Rio Receivers (In
> fact I can't see his name without thinking of them) and started an
> entire community around open source network audio device development,
> right? He's not a random user who's never done anything for "open
> source."

I never said that he hadn't done anything for open source, I said that to my
knowledge he has never made a big contribution to MythTV. Were Linus Torvalds
to show up on this list writing the same email my reply would have been no
different. It's probably worse coming from someone who is an open source
contributor, they should know better. We're working as fast as we can, if
that's not fast enough for someone then they need to roll up their sleeves
and get involved.

> Your attitude is very old school, antagonistic, and a big part of what
> people refer to as the open source "problem."

I might give Reza the benefit of the doubt and guess that he really didn't
mean to come across in the way that he did, but I'd describe what he did as
antagonistic. All that I did was to point out the realities of open source,
that it is human nature to take offence at criticism of what amounts to
charity work. The bulk of my email, as indicated by the quotes that I
included, was a reply to Willy who suggested we shouldn't get upset.

As far as the "open source problem" goes, a lot of people who have met me in
person on the MythTV stand at Linuxworld/LRL could tell you that I've got
pretty strong views on what those problems are. I've never counted myself as
part of the problem, maybe I am, but you are the first person to suggest
that. Personally I don't believe that, I'm happy to listen to users and hear
their views and criticisms of Mythtv, I even like to do it in person,
travelling hundreds of miles at my own expense. However I believe there are
limits and if anyone expects me to take criticism without reply, without
hearing my side of the argument, then they just aren't being reasonable.
--
Stuart Morgan
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reza at reza

Jan 20, 2008, 12:32 PM

Post #13 of 20 (2610 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

> He likely won't toot his own horn, but you do know that this is the
> guy who released the first opensource hacking of the Rio Receivers (In
> fact I can't see his name without thinking of them) and started an
> entire community around open source network audio device development,
> right? He's not a random user who's never done anything for "open
> source."

Hehe, I'm taken a bit back, thanks for remembering :) I'm actually not
the first, technically, Jeff Mock laid the original foundations for the
work I did.

Wow, people sure did get defensive after my post. I didn't mean it as a
threat, as I really don't see why anyone would care if I use one program
or another. I actually sent that post with a bit of a broken heart as
I've been such an avid fan of MythTV, and /did/ sumbit a bug fix now and
again /years/ ago when it was a lot more buggy and unstable of a system.
But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
down the pipeline. I did skim the last large number of posts, and found
nothing that stood out, so I posted.

And I did get a couple people saying that SVN was working reasonably
well, and to give it a shot, so I will. My hessitation in not just
trying it out is that the newer versions made DB changes which are a bit
of a pain to undo, making it a bit harder to roll back to a previous
version.

Thanks,
-Reza

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stuart at tase

Jan 20, 2008, 1:28 PM

Post #14 of 20 (2608 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> down the pipeline.

There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.

One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.

Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
through.

Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
fewer and further between.

There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.

--
Stuart Morgan
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Kevin.Fox at pnl

Jan 21, 2008, 11:50 AM

Post #15 of 20 (2586 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

So, if SVN is the most stable, and has a ton of bug fixes/new features,
why not just release it as is? Release Early, Release Often, has its
benefits. Why not make the 2 months from now release 0.22? What would it
hurt? It would allow people to just "apt-get update" (or whatever) all
the hard work that was added to Myth, that is out of reach of a lot of
people.

Kevin

On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:28 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> > But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> > decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> > see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> > down the pipeline.
>
> There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
> probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.
>
> One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
> last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
> always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
> we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
> their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
> what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.
>
> Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
> developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
> commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
> stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
> through.
>
> Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
> release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
> it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
> fewer and further between.
>
> There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
> all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
> mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
> caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
> probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
> in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.
>

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dbackeberg at gmail

Jan 21, 2008, 12:09 PM

Post #16 of 20 (2580 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

Aside from the reasons already given, (deferring to Isaac, more bugs
to fix, etc.) I also think the documentation isn't quite ready. When
Myth makes a release, I believe there is usually a guide of the sort
that came with .20.2 that mentioned the changes to expect and how to
use them. People who aren't code hackers and bug smooshers can help
out in that area. I know when I went from 20.2 to SVN I noticed tables
added to database and some other things.

But honestly, I would personally love to see a release myself. I'm
another long time user who wanted feature X and thus required jumping
to SVN. One thing that I've wanted (aside from mythweather) is a more
integrated Mythflix setup. I've decided that I should put up or shut
up, and thus joined the dev list to see how hard it would be to just
do this myself and submit a patch.

On Jan 21, 2008 2:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox [at] pnl> wrote:
> So, if SVN is the most stable, and has a ton of bug fixes/new features,
> why not just release it as is? Release Early, Release Often, has its
> benefits. Why not make the 2 months from now release 0.22? What would it
> hurt? It would allow people to just "apt-get update" (or whatever) all
> the hard work that was added to Myth, that is out of reach of a lot of
> people.
>
> Kevin
>
>
> On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:28 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> > On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> > > But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> > > decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> > > see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> > > down the pipeline.
> >
> > There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
> > probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.
> >
> > One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
> > last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
> > always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
> > we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
> > their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
> > what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.
> >
> > Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
> > developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
> > commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
> > stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
> > through.
> >
> > Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
> > release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
> > it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
> > fewer and further between.
> >
> > There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
> > all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
> > mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
> > caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
> > probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
> > in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

Kevin.Fox at pnl

Jan 21, 2008, 4:50 PM

Post #17 of 20 (2569 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

But, as previously mentioned, if its more stable, has less bugs, then
why not release it. Its not worse then what people are already running.
Getting more features out quicker may get you more developers to help
fix the remaining bugs.

I think that's part of the problem though. Going to SVN is not always an
option. I've considered submitting patches, but since I am on the stable
version, I'm not very encouraged to submit to something that's already
horribly out of date. I'm probably not the only one either. Release
Early, Release Often(1) has a lot of benefits I think Myth misses out
from. As far as documentation getting a little out of date, I can live
with that. I'm use to that from tons of other open source projects. In a
lot of projects, I consider any documentation at all a bonus. Having
reasonably current binaries in distro's that track fairly closely to
development is a much better thing then up to date documentation. It
means I have a reasonably good chance of submitting a bug fix or feature
myself based on what code I already have, or be able to talk to a
developer that says something other then "Oh, we know about that, we
fixed that in SVN 4 months ago, please wait a few months till we release
and it gets into your distro" kinds of things. (Not heard specifically
from the Myth project. Just a wild example)

Most other open source projects went away from long development cycles
because of this.

Kevin

No ill will intended. Just intended as constructive criticism

1.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html

On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 15:09 -0500, David Backeberg wrote:
> Aside from the reasons already given, (deferring to Isaac, more bugs
> to fix, etc.) I also think the documentation isn't quite ready. When
> Myth makes a release, I believe there is usually a guide of the sort
> that came with .20.2 that mentioned the changes to expect and how to
> use them. People who aren't code hackers and bug smooshers can help
> out in that area. I know when I went from 20.2 to SVN I noticed tables
> added to database and some other things.
>
> But honestly, I would personally love to see a release myself. I'm
> another long time user who wanted feature X and thus required jumping
> to SVN. One thing that I've wanted (aside from mythweather) is a more
> integrated Mythflix setup. I've decided that I should put up or shut
> up, and thus joined the dev list to see how hard it would be to just
> do this myself and submit a patch.
>
> On Jan 21, 2008 2:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox [at] pnl> wrote:
> > So, if SVN is the most stable, and has a ton of bug fixes/new features,
> > why not just release it as is? Release Early, Release Often, has its
> > benefits. Why not make the 2 months from now release 0.22? What would it
> > hurt? It would allow people to just "apt-get update" (or whatever) all
> > the hard work that was added to Myth, that is out of reach of a lot of
> > people.
> >
> > Kevin
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:28 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> > > On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> > > > But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> > > > decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> > > > see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> > > > down the pipeline.
> > >
> > > There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
> > > probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.
> > >
> > > One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
> > > last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
> > > always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
> > > we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
> > > their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
> > > what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.
> > >
> > > Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
> > > developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
> > > commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
> > > stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
> > > through.
> > >
> > > Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
> > > release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
> > > it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
> > > fewer and further between.
> > >
> > > There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
> > > all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
> > > mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
> > > caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
> > > probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
> > > in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > mythtv-dev mailing list
> > mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> >
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

stevehodge at gmail

Jan 21, 2008, 5:12 PM

Post #18 of 20 (2573 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

On Jan 22, 2008 1:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox [at] pnl> wrote:

> Going to SVN is not always an
> option. I've considered submitting patches, but since I am on the stable
> version, I'm not very encouraged to submit to something that's already
> horribly out of date.

Going to SVN is pretty much always going to be necessary if you want to do
development on MythTV. It doesn't matter whether "official stable" releases
happen monthly or yearly - you're still going to be out of date if you're
not running SVN.

> I'm probably not the only one either. Release
> Early, Release Often(1) has a lot of benefits I think Myth misses out
> from. As far as documentation getting a little out of date, I can live
> with that. I'm use to that from tons of other open source projects.

But MythTV has a lot of users who want to use it as an appliance. For them
accurate, up to date documentation is definitely important.

And consider the developers: releases cause additional work for them, work
that takes them away from regular development.

I don't see why "stabilized svn" releases need to be done by the MythTV
developers themselves. There are some distributions/repositories do this,
e.g. there are pre-0.21 Gentoo packages and ATrpms has a trunk package.
Perhaps you should consider using something like that.

Cheers,
Steve

dbackeberg at gmail

Jan 21, 2008, 7:55 PM

Post #19 of 20 (2580 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

I feel that mythtv gets SVN versus stable releases balance just about right.

The other extreme would be something like ffmpeg. You can read their
release philosophy here:
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/download.html

On Jan 21, 2008 7:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox [at] pnl> wrote:
> But, as previously mentioned, if its more stable, has less bugs, then
> why not release it. Its not worse then what people are already running.
> Getting more features out quicker may get you more developers to help
> fix the remaining bugs.
>
> I think that's part of the problem though. Going to SVN is not always an
> option. I've considered submitting patches, but since I am on the stable
> version, I'm not very encouraged to submit to something that's already
> horribly out of date. I'm probably not the only one either. Release
> Early, Release Often(1) has a lot of benefits I think Myth misses out
> from. As far as documentation getting a little out of date, I can live
> with that. I'm use to that from tons of other open source projects. In a
> lot of projects, I consider any documentation at all a bonus. Having
> reasonably current binaries in distro's that track fairly closely to
> development is a much better thing then up to date documentation. It
> means I have a reasonably good chance of submitting a bug fix or feature
> myself based on what code I already have, or be able to talk to a
> developer that says something other then "Oh, we know about that, we
> fixed that in SVN 4 months ago, please wait a few months till we release
> and it gets into your distro" kinds of things. (Not heard specifically
> from the Myth project. Just a wild example)
>
> Most other open source projects went away from long development cycles
> because of this.
>
> Kevin
>
> No ill will intended. Just intended as constructive criticism
>
> 1.
> http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html
>
>
> On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 15:09 -0500, David Backeberg wrote:
> > Aside from the reasons already given, (deferring to Isaac, more bugs
> > to fix, etc.) I also think the documentation isn't quite ready. When
> > Myth makes a release, I believe there is usually a guide of the sort
> > that came with .20.2 that mentioned the changes to expect and how to
> > use them. People who aren't code hackers and bug smooshers can help
> > out in that area. I know when I went from 20.2 to SVN I noticed tables
> > added to database and some other things.
> >
> > But honestly, I would personally love to see a release myself. I'm
> > another long time user who wanted feature X and thus required jumping
> > to SVN. One thing that I've wanted (aside from mythweather) is a more
> > integrated Mythflix setup. I've decided that I should put up or shut
> > up, and thus joined the dev list to see how hard it would be to just
> > do this myself and submit a patch.
> >
> > On Jan 21, 2008 2:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox [at] pnl> wrote:
> > > So, if SVN is the most stable, and has a ton of bug fixes/new features,
> > > why not just release it as is? Release Early, Release Often, has its
> > > benefits. Why not make the 2 months from now release 0.22? What would it
> > > hurt? It would allow people to just "apt-get update" (or whatever) all
> > > the hard work that was added to Myth, that is out of reach of a lot of
> > > people.
> > >
> > > Kevin
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:28 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> > > > On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> > > > > But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> > > > > decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> > > > > see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> > > > > down the pipeline.
> > > >
> > > > There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
> > > > probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.
> > > >
> > > > One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
> > > > last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
> > > > always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
> > > > we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
> > > > their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
> > > > what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.
> > > >
> > > > Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
> > > > developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
> > > > commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
> > > > stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
> > > > through.
> > > >
> > > > Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
> > > > release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
> > > > it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
> > > > fewer and further between.
> > > >
> > > > There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
> > > > all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
> > > > mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
> > > > caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
> > > > probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
> > > > in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > mythtv-dev mailing list
> > > mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> > > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > mythtv-dev mailing list
> > mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev [at] mythtv
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

laga+mythtv at laga

Jan 21, 2008, 11:23 PM

Post #20 of 20 (2587 views)
Permalink

Re: Status Question: Is current SVN useable? [In reply to]

Kevin Fox schrieb:
> But, as previously mentioned, if its more stable, has less bugs, then
> why not release it.

Because it still needs testing to make sure it does have less bugs and
that the remaining bugs are not too bad? There are also various areas
which still need some polishing - the polishing a great app like MythTV
deserves.

I run svn trunk (updating every month or so) so I can say that trunk
works reasonably well. But I also help maintain the Ubuntu packages and
I certainly don't want be swamped by bug reports just because upstream
(MythTV) left out the testing they did for previous releases.

> Having
> reasonably current binaries in distro's that track fairly closely to
> development is a much better thing then up to date documentation.

http://www.mythbuntu.org/auto-builds

Of course, I do agree with the "release early, release often" paradigm.
In my opinion however, that just doesn't mean you should create a svn
checkout every 6 months. There's more to it.

Just my 0.02€,

Michael

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