Month: April 2021

Picard 2.6.2 released

Picard 2.6.2 is a maintenance release for the recently release Picard 2.6. It fixes a bug where a plugin update could fail because Picard would use the old version from the network cache.

We also reverted a change from Picard 2.6.1, where if a file had no title or track number in metadata and Picard guesses this information from the file name, the title and track number would show up only as new metadata. This turned out to break people’s workflow who relied on this data for comparison with the actual new metadata loaded from MusicBrainz. For those of you who do not want Picard to automatically guess these tags from file names we will add an option in Picard 2.7 to completely disable this behavior.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

What’s new?

Bugfixes

  • [PICARD-2188] – Plugin update can fetch old version from network cache
  • [PICARD-2191] – Revert title and track number guessed from filename should show up as changed metadata

MusicBrainz Server update, 2021-04-19

Hi! We’re back with another (fairly small) release. Perhaps the most noticeable new thing, other than a few squashed bugs, is that we’re finally officially linking to the 1200px thumbnails of Cover Art Archive images. While these were being generated for new images already for quite a while, we didn’t want to start linking to them until we figured out how to ensure they were also generated for all the images already there. Thankfully, our user (and recent new auto-editor) ROpdebee got in touch with the right people in the Internet Archive and basically made all the efforts needed to ensure this happened. So, we officially have 1200px thumbnails now! That’s some big thumbnails for you.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to yyoung for improving Bandcamp and DNB URL cleanup. Thanks to CatQuest, chaban, kepstin, Lotheric, navap, selflessself, synthicalist13 and xplt for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to ROpdebee for helping us get all the 1200px thumbnails generated. Thanks to Mellthas, mfmeulenbelt, salorock and SistemaRayoXP for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2021-04-19.

Fixed Bug

  • [MBS-11500] – “Add cover art” edits link to no longer existing release
  • [MBS-11563] – Cache makes newly linked recordings not show in work rels table
  • [MBS-11564] – Niconi Commons “download for free” links blocked by Nicovideo cleanup
  • [MBS-11569] – Collection created from entity sidebar does not restrict entity type
  • [MBS-11581] – Release Group still shows cover art despite Release being darkened
  • [MBS-11582] – Instrument alias sortname guess button breaks page

Improvement

  • [MBS-9631] – Add 1200px to available sizes under cover art images, in release’s Cover Art tab
  • [MBS-9833] – Link relationship style guide within release edit relationships tool
  • [MBS-10534] – Handle both DNB permalinks and DNB search links
  • [MBS-11524] – Disallow *.bandcamp.com/ URLs at release and recording level
  • [MBS-11527] – Block smart links: music.indiefy.net
  • [MBS-11533] – Block smart links: snd.click
  • [MBS-11542] – Update Classical Archives URL format
  • [MBS-11552] – Add validation for Classical Archives links
  • [MBS-11566] – Ensure consistent ordering of appearances sections

Task

  • [MBS-11514] – Move from passing $c to using React.useContext in the sidebar
  • [MBS-11515] – Move from passing $c to using React.useContext in header/footer/menus
  • [MBS-11516] – Move from passing $c to using React.useContext in entity lists
  • [MBS-11517] – Move from passing $c to using React.useContext in MergeHelper

Picard 2.6.1 released

Picard 2.6.1 is a maintenance release for the recently release Picard 2.6. It brings bugfixes, performance improvements and some scripting enhancements.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

What’s new?

Bugfixes

  • [PICARD-2160] – Switching dark mode in macOS preferences does not change list elements leading to mix of light and dark mode
  • [PICARD-2166] – “Use original values” for a tag on a large selection takes very long with a high CPU usage
  • [PICARD-2168] – Keyboard shortcut to trigger script editor auto completion does not work on macOS
  • [PICARD-2170] – Title and track number guessed from filename should show up as changed metadata
  • [PICARD-2173] – “Search for similar tracks” is enabled by default, causes crash if used without selection
  • [PICARD-2187] – Scripting error in file naming options is not displayed properly

New Features

  • [PICARD-2161] – Add script function $unique to remove duplicate values from multi-value variables
  • [PICARD-2177] – Add script function $replacemulti to replace entries in multi-value variables

Improvements

  • [PICARD-2157] – Reduce comparison overhead of logging window
  • [PICARD-2162] – Coverart box is slow to update when many files are selected
  • [PICARD-2185] – Remove empty elements from $map() output

Acknowledgements

This release contains code contributions by Gabriel Ferreira, Bob Swift, Laurent Monin, Philipp Wolfer, Wieland Hoffmann and Adam James.

Many thanks also to all the translators and everyone who tested the beta releases and provided feedback on the community forums, IRC and the issue tracker.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2021-04-05

This time we have a lot of small bug fixes and improvements, and two changes that are likely to be more noticeable. The first one: the list of tags for a user is now paginated, and it shows the upvoted and downvoted tags separately. This is probably good news all around. The second one: long lists of relationships are also paginated. For example, the relationships page for the London Symphony Orchestra now only shows some of the orchestra relationships directly, with a link to “See all 17,303 relationships”. This change was needed, since these pages had become so big for some artists (and areas) that they were timing out since they took more than 30 seconds to load. This reduces the time for the largest pages to a few seconds – still a lot, but much more manageable. We understand that not having all the relationships shown at once might cause some issues with the workflow of some of our hardcore users. Sorry about that, but hopefully it won’t be too bad! If some use cases are very problematic, let us know and we will think about how to make it better.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to CatQuest, chaban, EndofLine, HibiscusKazeneko, jesus2099, kellnerd, Kid Devine, navap, Sophist and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to mfmeulenbelt and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2021-04-05.

Fixed Bug

  • [MBS-8477] – /user/<user>/tag/<tag> pages don’t distinguish between upvotes and downvotes
  • [MBS-8807] – Artist, Label and Series subscribers sub-page wrongly shows “You have no collections!”
  • [MBS-9543] – Seeding a string of “0” results in the field being blanked out
  • [MBS-11320] – When the “I don’t know the tracklist for this medium.” checkbox is unchecked on an existing release, the “Add medium” window pops up
  • [MBS-11321] – Strange things happen when adding the tracklist to a release with exactly 1 unknown medium
  • [MBS-11373] – Relationship merging in relationship editor no longer replaces empty dates
  • [MBS-11386] – Area containment missing from indexed area search results
  • [MBS-11442] – Entering a tag from the Add Cover Art page disables tagging and cover art submission
  • [MBS-11452] – Private user subscriptions tab shown on collection and subscribers page
  • [MBS-11454] – Can’t edit release with format/date clash even if error already existed
  • [MBS-11462] – Private subscriptions/tags/ratings user tabs uselessly shown to admins
  • [MBS-11473] – ISE when loading edit/open while logged out
  • [MBS-11508] – Qobuz favicon is missing
  • [MBS-11510] – Labels for arrows to move tracks up/down are not showing
  • [MBS-11531] – Filtering reports gives ISE
  • [MBS-11538] – Collections data missing in some sidebars

Improvement

  • [MBS-1178] – Relationship view needs paging.
  • [MBS-1870] – Showing a users tags should be paginated
  • [MBS-9310] – Link to created relationship type in Add Relationship Type edits
  • [MBS-9349] – Add Pinterest links to the sidebar
  • [MBS-10691] – Allow seeing tags the user has downvoted in user/tags
  • [MBS-10726] – Several release editor buttons say “disc” but really mean “medium”
  • [MBS-11429] – Don’t block editing if existing URL fails foul of later-added blocking rule
  • [MBS-11432] – Allow also linking places and works to Operabase
  • [MBS-11455] – Make linking of user statistics more consistent
  • [MBS-11467] – Use sort name to order lists of artists for tags
  • [MBS-11476] – Don’t show own open edits in /edit/open
  • [MBS-11485] – Allow irc(s):// links on expand2react
  • [MBS-11503] – Block smart links: trac.co
  • [MBS-11506] – Point home page ‘data’ link to ‘MB Database’

New Feature

  • [MBS-9851] – Add “is not edit author” option when searching for edits by “Edit Note Author”
  • [MBS-11222] – Add a report for releases with media without a tracklist

React Conversion Task

  • [MBS-10690] – Convert user tag list page to React

Our servers are on the move again!

Our servers are on the move again!

You might remember that a few years ago we moved all our servers from the US to Europe. Sadly, that has proven too costly* and prone to fires, so we have decided our servers will continue their travel east and move to India, where hosting them will be significantly cheaper and cooling can be provided by sun-covering swarms of locusts. Most of the non-slacking members of our dev team are based in India by now anyway, so it feels like the right place!

As part of our cost-cutting process, and since air travel is not environmentally friendly anyway, we sent our servers East by boat. Unluckily, that means they had to wait their turn for quite a while in the only traffic jam you can see from space. Luckily that is starting to get resolved now, but it will still take quite a while for the servers to clear the traffic jam, reach their destination and then be located among the twenty thousand containers in the ship carrying them, especially with all other jammed ships arriving at the same time! We’re hoping to be done with it all in a couple months though, after which you can hopefully expect a return to our usual (not-particularly-)fast service.

In the meantime, our whole infrastructure is being hosted on some old servers that our friends at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona donated to us. They claimed they were getting too old for use in a rigorous academic environment, that as we all know in Spain requires systems to work continuously for a few hours every weekday with only a short break for a midday nap. These donated servers are now running from our executive director’s basement. Any issues you have noticed recently are solely caused by this (and have nothing to do at all with the skill and attention span of our development team).

* It could be argued that we should be able to cover the costs given we have had several years of good financial stability by now. While that is true, when we realised that the alternative is to cut costs and spend the savings on fancy ham and beers, the right choice became obvious to us.