Month: April 2012

Server update, 2012-04-30

We’ve released another set of bug fixes and improvements for the server. Thanks to Joachim LeBlanc, Johannes Weißl and the rest of the MusicBrainz team for helping on this release!

Bug

  • [MBS-2553] – Change wording for no External Links in the sidebar
  • [MBS-4041] – Nonexistent elections cause Internal Server Error
  • [MBS-4544] – Predefined advanced searches on /search no longer work
  • [MBS-4547] – URL cleanup broken on URL edit page
  • [MBS-4563] – Plugin::Diff is broken
  • [MBS-4564] – robots.txt served as octet-stream on test.mb
  • [MBS-4566] – Advanced Search Syntax Link missing from Search
  • [MBS-4573] – Show a message when a label has no releases
  • [MBS-4597] – Merging can fail if entities have aliases with the same locale
  • [MBS-4609] – Comment element on release group in /ws/2 should be removed

Improvement

  • [MBS-1167] – "Read more" for annotation previews should load the full annotation in place, not take you to a different page
  • [MBS-1881] – Move relationship types/attributes/instruments lists
  • [MBS-2479] – Mark approvals differently from normal Yes votes
  • [MBS-2814] – Reports don’t highlight entities with pending edits
  • [MBS-3684] – Improve sorting of the "Releases with superfluous data tracks" report
  • [MBS-4038] – Let users edit their permissions on test servers
  • [MBS-4063] – Exclude stuff marked Single AND UK from the SeparateDiscs report
  • [MBS-4125] – Sort report for creative commons download relationships
  • [MBS-4476] – Provide indication of non-front cover art
  • [MBS-4493] – ISRCs with multiple recordings: Do something about the DEF05 ISRCs
  • [MBS-4530] – Remove the recordings with CC download relationships report
  • [MBS-4560] – "No votes" failed edit should not fail in silence
  • [MBS-4572] – Open up /artist/ in robots.txt

New Feature

  • [MBS-4551] – Display which git branch is active
  • [MBS-4567] – Use markdown for README and INSTALL
  • [MBS-4576] – Allow for google analytics support
  • [MBS-4590] – Use /doc/About instead of /doc/About_MusicBrainz
  • We’ve also improved cover art support slightly.

Sub-task

  • [MBS-4160] – SoundCloud relationship under the External links section

Announcing libmusicbrainz4 release 4.0.1

v4.0.1 of libmusicbrainz4 has now been released. This is primarily a maintenance release to fix a couple of bugs that were reported. Additionally, the code has now moved to GitHub, and can now be found at
https://github.com/metabrainz/libmusicbrainz.

The main changes are:

  • Fixed bug LMB-30 – Unable to access all relation lists on objects with multiple relation lists
  • Fixed bug LMB-31 – mb_relationlist_get_targettype always returns “target-type”

The interface has changed as regards to retrieving relation lists, due to LMB-30. Previously, the library only returned the last relation list that was returned in the XML response. The old ‘RelationList’ method on the Artist, Label, Recording, Release, ReleaseGroup and Work classes has been marked ‘deprecated’, and a new ‘RelationListList’ method will return a list of all relation lists for the entity.

For backwards compatibility, the ‘RelationList’ method will operate in the same manner as release 4.0.0, only returning the last relation list.

As ever, please see the enclosed README for details on support and bug reporting. The release is available for download at http://musicbrainz.org/doc/libmusicbrainz.

Server update, 2012-04-10

Sorry for being a week behind on this release, but we’ve just finished pushing out another set of changes. Many thanks to Lukáš Lalinský, Paul Taylor and the rest of the MusicBrainz team for making this release happen! Here’s what we’ve just released:

Bug

  • [MBS-3619] – Statistics page doesn’t validate
  • [MBS-3794] – A "no votes" edits got wrong status "failed vote"
  • [MBS-3834] – Hovering over artist names in "edit medium" tracklist changes does not show the artist sort name
  • [MBS-4082] – Titles including quote marks are truncated when adding from a CD Stub
  • [MBS-4131] – Edits show credited-as name when it’s the same as the artist name
  • [MBS-4183] – Release editor: enters new artist if no radio button selected on ‘add missing entities’ tab
  • [MBS-4314] – Add interface elements to reorder tracks on a tracklist without having to edit the tracknumbers.
  • [MBS-4367] – Current search URLs are broken on the test server
  • [MBS-4418] – beta.mb is unresponsive
  • [MBS-4467] – ws/2/label doesn’t include label comment
  • [MBS-4484] – Limited user can vote on edits
  • [MBS-4500] – ISE: ‘Can’t call method "is_auto_editor"’ when attaching a TOC
  • [MBS-4504] – Set default unknown value for medium.format_name

Improvement

  • [MBS-684] – TOC lookup displays too little release info
  • [MBS-834] – Weird behaviour of the search checkboxes
  • [MBS-1728] – Make ModBot’s edit notes grey again
  • [MBS-1764] – Inconsistent display for merge edits
  • [MBS-2242] – Disable editing of Medium title when there’s only one medium
  • [MBS-2412] – User tags should be sorted
  • [MBS-2867] – RE: "Add n track(s)" should reset to 1
  • [MBS-3171] – Overview and Recording pages need to be able to exclude featured guest spots from display
  • [MBS-3208] – Trim leading/trailing whitespace in release editor prior to Add Missing Entities check
  • [MBS-3398] – Detect "M" in front of track numbers
  • [MBS-3482] – "YouTube Relatiionship Type" needs autofix and doc
  • [MBS-3628] – Prevent people from adding broken Facebook URLs
  • [MBS-4234] – Move Basic search logic from mbserver to searchserver
  • [MBS-4390] – Display disambiguation comments better in tooltips
  • [MBS-4490] – "CD N" in Add disc from existing tracklist is confusing
  • [MBS-4523] – Statistics: Use commas and right-align numbers
  • [MBS-4535] – Make visited links more prominent

New Feature

  • [MBS-3160] – Add view to artist pages that shows release groups/recordings/etc credited to that artist only (solo releases only – exclude collaborations, feat., etc)
  • [MBS-3266] – Allow filtering by artist credit

The Git tag for this release is v-2012-04-10-ngs-bug-fixes.

Please tell us what you think about our proposed "no waiting" access to our Web Service

We’re working to add a paid option to our Web Service for commercial users and for end users who would like to have faster access. We’re finally getting close to being able to offer this service and we would like to get some feedback from our users about this.

We are proposing to add “no waiting” access to our web service — this proposed service would:

  1. Allow continuous sequential access to our version 2 web service without delays between calls. You would not be required to have any delays between calls to the web service (our current service requires a 1 second delay between calls)
  2. Still have a global rate limit that may temporarily deny callers access to our web service (with 503 responses) if our service gets overloaded. We would work hard to ensure that our service would not reach this limit, since its a paid service, but we cannot guarantee that.
  3. Not allow concurrent (more than one call at a time) calls to our web service per user. We reserve the right to terminate your service if we find that you are making concurrent calls to our “no waiting” service.

Our existing web service will not be affected by this new service — the existing service will remain free and limited to one request per second as it is now. Initially the new service is intended for end-users who wish to have faster access to our web service. Once we’ve ironed out the kinks in this new service we will offer this service for commercial customers as well.

Finally, we’ve set up a very short survey (3 questions only!) to gather some feedback from you about this service. We’re mainly trying to establish a reasonable price for this service. Please take our survey and let us know what you think and how much you’d pay for our service.

All of your responses will be private and the survey does not ask for any information about you. Thanks, we appreciate your thoughts!

Official schema change release announcement for May 2012 release

We’ve been working on hammering out the details of the upcoming schema change release and we’ve settled on 11 tickets that we’re going to implement. For a detailed description of how our database will change, please refer to the our documentation for these tickets.

This release will happen on or about 15 May, 2012.