Category: Development

Server update, 2014-11-03

This release was pushed back a week due to scheduling around the GSoC summit and upcoming schema change release, but here it finally is. Editors can take note that more edit types are now auto-edits: adding recording-work relationships, adding/editing aliases, setting track durations, and editing cover artwork. We’ve also added a “Make all edits votable” checkbox to allow edits that are normally always applied automatically (like capitalization changes) to be left open for voting if there’s any dispute or uncertainty. Auto-editors should be aware that this checkbox replaces the one that previously toggled their auto-editor privileges (so it should be left unchecked wherever it was previously left checked).

As part of this release, we’ve deployed some changes that should hopefully prevent slow /ws/2 searches from tying up too many perl processes on our frontends. This may reduce the number of 502s we’ve been seeing lately, but it’s a bit early to pronounce any results. Thanks go to kepstin for suggesting the nginx trickery used here.

More thanks go to chirlu, nikki, and ianmcorvidae for their hard work on today’s release.

The git tag is v-2014-11-03 and the full changelog is below.

Bug

  • [MBS-1444] – Make ‘i’ <-> ‘ı’ an auto-edit.
  • [MBS-5961] – BC dates in search results are parsed incorrectly
  • [MBS-6545] – Medium added without tracknumbers magically gains them
  • [MBS-7399] – Can’t link to TheSession.org’s artist pages
  • [MBS-7927] – Text strings on fingerprints tab are not correctly escaped
  • [MBS-7935] – Can’t add URL examples to relationship documentation
  • [MBS-7938] – Track parser resets track artists to the release artist when “lines contain track artists” is unchecked
  • [MBS-7960] – The link to the mailing lists doc page in the menu doesn’t work
  • [MBS-7961] – Wikidocs redirects are broken
  • [MBS-7962] – Links on /doc/ pages are no longer converted

Improvement

  • [MBS-1479] – Make it possible to leave a capitalization-diacritics edit open
  • [MBS-6011] – Strip out LRM/RLM characters in text with no RTL characters
  • [MBS-7880] – Release editor should have options to copy only titles or only artists to recordings, instead of always both
  • [MBS-7902] – Use nginx X-Accel-Redirect to handle Webservice search requests rather than doing it in perl
  • [MBS-7934] – Add IMSLP autoselect for artists
  • [MBS-7944] – Make recording-work add relationship edits auto-edits
  • [MBS-7945] – Make add/edit alias edits auto-edits
  • [MBS-7946] – Make set track duration edits auto-edits
  • [MBS-7947] – Make edit cover art edits auto-edits
  • [MBS-7953] – Extend normalise_strings to cover more punctuation

Task

  • [MBS-7939] – Add autoselect and validation for release-level Allmusic
  • [MBS-7942] – Add a bunch of sites to the whitelist for dbs

Server update, 2014-10-13 (a day late)

I’m slacking again and it’s a day late, but here’s another server release, almost kinda on schedule!

We’ve included a few nice improvements this release:

  • Better ways to use Track MBIDs (added in May 2013!), by both linking to their URLs on the site and by allowing them to be used as a linked entity for release lookups (this work by ianmcorvidae, with a bit added by chirlu).
  • Place coordinates can now be selected using a map on the edit page and feedback on proper coordinate formatting needn’t wait for a full form submission (thanks nikki!). This new interface can be seen in the image accompanying this post!
  • When the Internet Archive is likely to reject Cover Art Archive uploads, a warning should now be shown on the site (thanks to the IA for implementing an endpoint to use for this, and nikki for integrating it).
  • Data entered on the site should now be normalized according to Unicode Normalization Form C (or NFC), which means that, for example, a character entered with a separate combining acute accent will be normalized to a combined character where one is available (thanks to chirlu for this work).
  • A variety of edit listing pages, including edit search, should be faster due to an overhaul in our query generation and database indexing (thanks to chirlu for this!).
  • A variety of other bug fixes and smaller improvements, as usual (thanks to bitmap, ianmcorvidae, nikki, and chirlu for various pieces).

The git tag for this release is v-2014-10-13.

The full list of issues, as usual:

Bug

  • [MBS-7750] – Video attribute displays confusingly as “(true)”
  • [MBS-7875] – “Recording of” relationship inherits instrument from artist
  • [MBS-7886] – Internal server error when trying to include ratings for places in the webservice
  • [MBS-7888] – Searching in a new tab from relationship editor disables search button
  • [MBS-7892] – Instrument merge process has not been updated for creditable attributes
  • [MBS-7893] – Disambiguation not displayed in area search results
  • [MBS-7905] – ISE when including place-rels and fmt=json
  • [MBS-7915] – Tracklist missing on “Set track durations” page
  • [MBS-7916] – “Set track durations” preview is broken for single-track mediums

Improvement

  • [MBS-3725] – webservice discid lookup should accept query with only a toc
  • [MBS-5553] – Tell the user before uploading when the Cover Art Archive is down
  • [MBS-6010] – Normalise text to NFC
  • [MBS-6829] – Select place location using a map
  • [MBS-6972] – Provide immediate feedback when editing coordinates
  • [MBS-7634] – Standardise lightbox image links from Commons
  • [MBS-7693] – Release Editor’s “edit the release group” does not open in a new tab
  • [MBS-7831] – Votes by Editor is ordered by edit time, but would be more useful ordered by vote time.
  • [MBS-7869] – Make edit search faster
  • [MBS-7895] – Make reordering mediums an auto-edit
  • [MBS-7896] – Deal better with track MBIDs when merging releases
  • [MBS-7897] – Provide a way to look up things by track MBID via the WS
  • [MBS-7898] – Link to track MBIDs from the tracklist

Search server release: 2014-10-08

Paul Taylor has written a few fixes for the current search server, which we just deployed. Thanks for your hard work on this release, Paul!

Release Notes – MusicBrainz Search Server – Version 2014-10-08

Bug

  • [SEARCH-258] – Search api returns zero results with unicode hyphen instead of dash in query
  • [SEARCH-314] – Combining diacritics are not handled correctly
  • [SEARCH-328] – Phrase search fails on Artist field if the artist credit is a multiple name credit and the join phrase within db contains no whitespace
  • [SEARCH-373] – Searching places by tag doesn’t work
  • [SEARCH-379] – JSON recording response embeds track artist credit inside an artist credit
  • [SEARCH-383] – JSON return an array called ‘artist’ instead of ‘artists’
  • [SEARCH-387] – Search Server Indexing Failure

Improvement

  • [SEARCH-386] – Use bigrams to improve relevancy of CJK results

Server update, 2014-09-29/2014-09-30

A day late on this, due to the summit, sickness, and a variety of travel. But we’ve got you all another release to kick around!

The git tag for this release is v-2014-09-30.

We’ve only got two actual tickets this release, which follow:

Bug

  • [MBS-7642] – Areas displayed in wrong order?
  • [MBS-7871] – Features using localStorage don’t handle quota exceeded/out of device space errors

Other work that was done this release primarily relates to sitemaps and json-ld (for which we haven’t been making tickets) and refactoring of guess case code, as well as some other small fixes. The full list of commits is available at https://github.com/metabrainz/musicbrainz-server/compare/v-2014-09-15…v-2014-09-30 for the specifically curious.

2014-11-17 schema change release details

We’re now 60 days away from our fall schema change, so we’re announcing the tickets we intend to implement for the next schema change release:

  • [MBS-1059] – Types of list/collection: This new feature will allow a user to specify what type of list/collection they have.
  • [MBS-5458] – CD Stubs replication: Replicate the CD Stub data as part of our replicated data feed.
  • [MBS-6201] – Add an “event” entity: This is the big feature for this release. This feature allows us to record events like concerts or recordings, both future events and past events!
  • [MBS-7551] – Add folksonomy tag support to all entities without them. This features will allow users to tag any of our entities.
  • [MBS-7638] – CreateIndexes for instruments wrongly looks at label tables: During our last release we created an incorrect index. This fixes this mistake.
  • [MBS-7784] – Support for data tracks in tracklists: This new feature would allow us to properly track Audio-CD data tracks in our tracklists.

Besides the events, there isn’t anything earth shattering in here.

Server update, 2014-09-15

As planned, another musicbrainz-server release today. Nothing too exciting this time, but we’ve got the usual lot of bug fixes and improvements in.

For all editors, setting a release group’s cover art is now an auto-edit (i.e. applied instantly). Another noticeable change on entity pages is the inclusion of Wikimedia Commons images in the sidebar on all tabs, if a relationship for one exists (previously they were only visible on the main tabs).

Thanks to chirlu, navap, nikki and ianmcorvidae for their work on today’s release (entire list of changes below). The git tag is v-2014-09-15.

Note: The next release coincides with the MusicBrainz Summit (along with the core team members traveling in Europe), so the timeliness of it isn’t a sure thing, but we’ll do our best to stay on schedule.

Bug

  • [MBS-5989] – Name variation marker used in edit’s tracks although track name == recording name
  • [MBS-6088] – Pending relationship edits are not highlighted on inline release display
  • [MBS-6573] – Release group cover art is automatically set to the newest cover art edit; reverting it is not an auto-edit.
  • [MBS-6768] – “Edit artist alias” should show whether the alias is Locale Primary
  • [MBS-7435] – RTL track titles incorrectly displayed on recording pages
  • [MBS-7461] – Remember-me token has less than the advertised entropy
  • [MBS-7598] – “ended” checkbox shows up even for relationships which can’t have dates
  • [MBS-7721] – Wrong track order on add release
  • [MBS-7762] – Artist commons image only shows on artist overview
  • [MBS-7836] – Add ISRCs edits don’t display all useful and available data
  • [MBS-7842] – Entity types not always translated on edit listings
  • [MBS-7848] – Error selecting relationship type that requires an instrument
  • [MBS-7852] – Relationships should only be loaded where necessary
  • [MBS-7860] – Internal server error when you pass /ws/js/release a non-existent MBID
  • [MBS-7861] – Exception using guess case on a medium with empty tracks
  • [MBS-7865] – Merely referencing session/localStorage in Firefox fails with SecurityError when cookie policy is “ask every time”
  • [MBS-7867] – Changing the target of a relationship removes instrument attribute
  • [MBS-7870] – Exception switching link type of relationship that has attributes to one that does not

Improvement

  • [MBS-1951] – Specify whether viewing “all” edits by a user or just “open” edits.
  • [MBS-5995] – Always show original entity name in name variation entity tooltip
  • [MBS-6866] – Enable privileged users to set the new status banner message text
  • [MBS-6868] – Edit artist alias: primary for locale (which locale?)
  • [MBS-7790] – Please divide the strings “yes” and “no”
  • [MBS-7829] – List account admins on privileged users page

Server update, 2014-09-01 (a day late)

Another release! Due to holiday here in the US, and poor planning on the part of yours truly, a day late. The biggest thing this release is that we’ve finally enabled instrument credits, the schema changes for which were added in May of 2013. This means it should now be possible to enter the names of instruments as credited, whether or not this matches the name of the instrument entity in MusicBrainz! Thanks to bitmap and chirlu for fixing the bulk of the issues this release.

The git tag for this release corresponds to the correct day of release, so is v-2014-09-01. The full list of fixed issues, as usual:

Bug

  • [MBS-4531] – Pending edits not highlighted in appearances section of relationships tab
  • [MBS-4673] – Pending edits are not highlighted in artist credits
  • [MBS-5511] – “see all versions” release group link is missing the “moderation pending” pending edits orange background colour
  • [MBS-6088] – Pending relationship edits are not highlighted on inline release display
  • [MBS-6540] – Artist not highlighted on release page even though it has pending edits
  • [MBS-7371] – Release editor does not warn about unlinked label
  • [MBS-7554] – “Remove relationship” edits don’t store the “ended” field
  • [MBS-7670] – ISE when adding catalog for recording
  • [MBS-7767] – Mini relationship editor may change unrelated ARs
  • [MBS-7776] – Text attribute with value “0” is not displayed
  • [MBS-7779] – Tabs in dropdown menus show as ” “
  • [MBS-7809] – Track parser can cause track to disappear with mysterious validation error

Task

Server update, 2014-08-04

Another fortnight, another release. This one includes the usual bug fixes as well as some improvements. For editors, sort names are no longer required on alias pages (they’ll default to the name if left blank). For web service clients, it’s also now possible to do fuzzy TOC searches for non-CD mediums by passing a media-format=all option to the /ws/2/discid endpoint.

Thanks to chirlu, nikki, and the MetaBrainz team for their hard work on today’s release.

The git tag is v-2014-08-04.

Bug

  • [MBS-7739] – Release group type not properly displayed in RG search results
  • [MBS-7744] – ws/2 not returning correct Area alias type
  • [MBS-7763] – Cannot edit band membership
  • [MBS-7771] – Textarea fields don’t escape HTML special characters
  • [MBS-7774] – ISE when changing series relationship number attribute
  • [MBS-7775] – Initial order is ignored when creating a manually ordered series
  • [MBS-7783] – Empty link phrase section after removing relationship

Improvement

  • [MBS-6833] – Display a map on the places page
  • [MBS-6896] – Stop requiring users to enter sortnames for non-artist entities
  • [MBS-7757] – Add a media-format=all option to the /ws/2/discid endpoint
  • [MBS-7758] – Do not require a discid argument if a TOC is supplied
  • [MBS-7764] – _generic_link MACRO is really slow
  • [MBS-7786] – Long URL cleanup regexes should be split into separate ones
  • [MBS-7787] – Annotation edit types should share a single template

Task

  • [MBS-7756] – Make use of %ENTITIES in (yet) more places

Server update, 2014-07-21

A small release this week, as a lot of work has been happening on larger things in progress and on other projects. Still a few various bugs and some improvements aimed at improving the performance of the release and relationship editors. Thanks to chirlu, bitmap, and ianmcorvidae for their work on this release.

The git tag for this release is v-2014-07-21.

Full ticket list.

Bug

  • [MBS-7594] – Changing a track’s recording doesn’t properly clear the old recording from cache
  • [MBS-7680] – Add relationship dialog prepopulated with too many attributes
  • [MBS-7717] – Discogs URL cleanup doesn’t remove trailing dash
  • [MBS-7720] – Release group ratings disappeared from release sidebar
  • [MBS-7736] – "Merge release" edit not closing
  • [MBS-7747] – Missing/duplicate results in inline direct search
  • [MBS-7748] – Merging areas doesn’t update places

Improvement

  • [MBS-7135] – Remove "view" part from Discogs master URLs
  • [MBS-7689] – mini-relationship-editor UI is unbearably slow when there are many items
  • [MBS-7741] – Reordering tracks/mediums in the release editor can be slow

About next stable Picard release

Picard team decided to release a new stable version of Picard before the end of the summer.
To help us, advanced users, translators and developers are encouraged to:

Exact release date is not yet known, and features aren’t yet frozen, but the only important change we’ll try to get in before final release is OAuth support (PICARD-305), we still accept minor patches until feature freeze is announced.

Since Picard is now using some translation resources from MusicBrainz project, translators should make sure following resources are up-to-date:

A simplified list of changes made since 1.2 can be read there.

Be aware that downgrading from 1.3 to 1.2 may lead to configuration compatibility issues, better save your configuration before using 1.3 branch if you intent to go back to 1.2.