Category: Development

Schema change, 2012-01-12

We’ve just finished pushing out the scheduled schema change update today. A slightly rocky experience, but we’ve managed to get everything ironed out now and our servers are back to their normal selves. Before, I get into release notes, a few notes for people who’d like to upgrade their non-replicated servers. For replicated servers, please see this post.

  1. First, update your repository to the v-2012-01-12-schema-change tag.
  2. Next, disable any MusicBrainz cron jobs you might have scheduled to run
  3. Run ./upgrade.sh provided in the root directory of your musicbrainz-server checkout.
  4. Update your DBDefs DB_SCHEMA_SEQUENCE configuration option to 14.
  5. Turn any cron jobs back on

And onto the release notes!

Bug

  • [MBS-2121] – Deleting track/row in advanced tracklist editor while artist credits "dialog" is open leaves it stuck
  • [MBS-2390] – It’s not really possible to assign a track to a recording because cannot see length of track in either tracklist or proposal list
  • [MBS-2620] – Most ‘edit’ edits do not check for conflicts
  • [MBS-3393] – App keeps DB connections open and doesn’t reconnect upon DB restart.
  • [MBS-3696] – Using Jamendo as License Relationship fails due to Javascript change to Cover Art relationship
  • [MBS-3972] – ISWC column on works page should be nowrap
  • [MBS-4046] – Releases with pending edits are not marked as such in label page
  • [MBS-4099] – The server should give a good error message when it can’t connect to the DB
  • [MBS-4103] – Problems building database extensions with Ubuntu 11.10
  • [MBS-4129] – "Edit artist" doesn’t change artist credit for credits that were unchecked by default but checked manually
  • [MBS-4132] – Rate limited pages send HTML as text/plain
  • [MBS-4134] – Javascript sorting broken on Country statistics page since comma has been introduced
  • [MBS-4136] – beta.mb: recording edits generated by release editor when updating recording information from track changes are not auto-edits
  • [MBS-4138] – Language-Script page in statistics broke
  • [MBS-4146] – Track times deleted if using tab key
  • [MBS-4149] – The added referrer stuff breaks Amazon UK links
  • [MBS-4157] – beta.mb: Edit recording edits seem to create a ‘edit release’ edit too
  • [MBS-4169] – CDToc page shows blank/empty catalog numbers separated by commas

Improvement

  • [MBS-1482] – Report: no language, no script
  • [MBS-2439] – Releases with multiple catalog numbers are shown multiple times on the Label page.
  • [MBS-2513] – Allow updating recording information when track information changes via the release editor
  • [MBS-3288] – Release group type isn’t shown when looking up a release group
  • [MBS-4105] – Warn when merging releases with track artists that don’t match

New Feature

  • [MBS-4147] – Display AcoustIDs using JavaScript

Task

  • [MBS-3672] – Remove the deprecated Live Sound Engineer relationship

Sub-task

  • [MBS-2676] – Filter by relationship type

Server release tomorrow, January 12: Noon PST, 3PM EST, 20:00UK, 21:00CEST

We’re going to push out a server release tomorrow, January 12, at Noon PST, 3PM EST, 20:00UK, 21:00CEST. We expect to be offline for only a few minutes, but we’re going say that we’ll be offline for about 15 minutes starting right around that time.

Once we complete the server release, we’re going to post the usual list of bugs fixed, changes applied and new features created. Stay tuned!

Server update, 2012-01-05

With Christmas, New Year, and all that fuss out of the way, I’ve finally been able to get a new release out. We’re only 2 weeks behind on this one I think… oops. Hopefully, we make up for it with these fixes. Also, just a quick reminder that our little scheduling website is open, and needs your feedback to help us decide what will make it into future versions. Happy editing!

Bug

  • [MBS-1117] – Show relationship attributes on artist relationship pages
  • [MBS-1169] – Musicbrainz website is missing HTML escaping on user entered data
  • [MBS-1391] – Relate to… box stays up until you click cancel
  • [MBS-2022] – Amazon referrer stuff not included in Amazon links
  • [MBS-2770] – Inline Search: problems changing from indexed to direct
  • [MBS-3352] – Typing "57" in length field should become "0:57"
  • [MBS-3357] – In Release Editor Recordings tab there direct search doesnt seem to consider the artist when showing matches.
  • [MBS-3512] – Release editor added a track duration out of the blue
  • [MBS-3790] – Error (foreign key constraint violation) when editing URL
  • [MBS-3832] – Clicking one "vote on all edits" button doesn’t unselect other
  • [MBS-3941] – Can’t unselect an entity in Add Missing Entities
  • [MBS-3942] – Proposer and seconders can’t see voting tally in autoeditor elections
  • [MBS-3953] – /ws/2/release/mbid with ‘recordings’ inc parameter crashes if the release doesn’t have any tracks
  • [MBS-3970] – Admin menu in menu bar not displayed anymore
  • [MBS-4012] – Track times without colons are no longer guessed
  • [MBS-4015] – Edit Relationship page is missing some css
  • [MBS-4042] – Disambiguation field is still labelled as "comment" on some pages
  • [MBS-4086] – Data dumps don’t import using master

Improvement

  • [MBS-801] – Display release relationships on release page
  • [MBS-1362] – Add Range-checkbox-checking to site
  • [MBS-1368] – Inline Search: focus on a field
  • [MBS-1627] – Transcluded documentation should have hierarchy links
  • [MBS-1904] – Background no longer changes colour when voting
  • [MBS-1911] – Cryptic warning when merging works.
  • [MBS-2409] – Allow removing recording-PUID links from the /puid pages
  • [MBS-2465] – RE: Add Guess Sortname to the Add Missing Entities tab
  • [MBS-2531] – Add IPI lookup to the lookup page
  • [MBS-2890] – Show artist comment in Edit / Add medium edits
  • [MBS-3042] – Add the possibility to update artist credits when renaming an artist
  • [MBS-3277] – Make menus go away when I stop hovering
  • [MBS-3447] – Releases should show how many people have it in their collection
  • [MBS-3494] – Allow "Edit artist credit" to rename artist credits
  • [MBS-3520] – Rename "quality" to "data quality"
  • [MBS-3604] – Use tooltip to inform users on tracklist editor why they cannot edit track lengths
  • [MBS-3854] – Annotation history page is confusing
  • [MBS-3896] – "Change RG" page says nothing if search finds no results
  • [MBS-3999] – Add user panel display for limited accounts
  • [MBS-4011] – Allow kasi-time.com URLs for lyrics

Task

  • [MBS-3779] – Products menu needs to link to client libraries

Sub-task

  • [MBS-3973] – Filter by label country

Search server bug fix release: 2011-12-24

On Christmas eve we updated our search servers with a couple of bug fixes, but then got side-tracked with Christmas itself to write this blog post. I’m finally now fixing this. 🙂

We updated our search server so that is it rate limiter enabled, which will allow us to free up another machine in the New Year. We also have two fixes in search to give better results when a name is made up of numbers, or a title contains punctuation characters.

Release Notes – MusicBrainz Search Server – Version 2011-12-24

Bug

  • [SEARCH-158] – artist not found when searching
  • [SEARCH-159] – : shoud be ignored when searching

New Feature

  • [SEARCH-161] – Search server should consult ratelimit-server

Many thanks to Paul for working on this!

Scheduling opened to all unscheduled tickets

We finished making some decisions on a few tickets in IRC today regarding scheduling stuff that was in the Scheduling Game. After this, we decided that it was time to open the game up to all issues that we weren’t sure when to schedule. This means that scheduling.ocharles.org.uk now has approx. 700 issues that we need help scheduling!

For more information on the scheduling game, see the introductory blog post.

It’s a lot to get through, but over time, the critical issues should gradually rise to the top, and our core developers can help solve these as quickly as possible. Happy voting, and thanks for all your help so far!

Schema change releases for 2012

One of the issues raised at the last summit was that our customers could use more time to prepare for schema change releases, since they require engineering effort on their part. In an effort to meet our customer’s needs we’re going to a set schedule for schema change releases. Going forward we’re going to have two schema change releases per year: On or about 15 May and on or about 15 October.

We’ve picked these two dates as dates that have the least amount of impact from holidays and people taking holidays. Most companies have normal working schedules around these dates, which should allow companies to dedicate the required resources to handle our schema changes.

However, we have one significant change that we need to push out on a more timely basis than May of next year. For that reason we’re going to plan a one-time exception to our new schedule for 12 January 2012. You can see the tickets we’ve scheduled for release in January in this schema change milestone.

We’ve already created release versions in Jira for all of the schema change releases in 2012. As we go through the year we’re going to add tickets to that milestone. Of course, we’re going to make lots of noise as these schema change release dates approach. We’re going to post a list of tickets that will be included no later than a month before the release.

Any questions? Ask them in the comments!

Search server update 2011-12-08

We’ve just updated our search server with the latest changes and bug fixes!

This update to the Search Server finally solves the search for artist “!!!” problem properly, should now be able to find just about any artist, release, etc that contain any crazy character combination. Also you can now search for number of releases in release groups and artists with unknown gender. The code base has now been updated to Lucene 3.4, which was the latest available when these changes were made (its at 3.5 now).

Thanks for your hard work on this Paul!

Bug

  • [SEARCH-33] – Search needs to find a preposterously bad label name: !"@.*!%
  • [SEARCH-51] – Searching for certain characters returns no results, even if they’re valid.
  • [SEARCH-131] – When search for Unknown country it returns <country>UNKNOWN</country> it should return nothing
  • [SEARCH-134] – Annotation search can’t filter by type for release groups

Improvement

  • [SEARCH-93] – Update Search Index Code to Lucene 3.4
  • [SEARCH-119] – Allow artist search for gender:unknown
  • [SEARCH-124] – Allow searching release groups by # releases
  • [SEARCH-128] – Make Search Server use mmap by default

Server update 2011-12-05

Another update has just gone out, a few days later than planned. This is mostly a bug fix and minor improvement release. Sadly, when deploying the update we broke the release editor for anyone who was editing during the server switches – something we didn’t anticipate. Sorry! Here’s what’s changed:

Bug

  • [MBS-2371] – Can’t type in the basic tracklist editor
  • [MBS-2785] – Release Editor messes up release artist multi-artist credits
  • [MBS-3152] – Tracklist duplication with sub-second track duration differences
  • [MBS-3428] – If seed new release with track artist ids it doesnt properly resolve the artist ids
  • [MBS-3471] – Wrong display of RG in the Edit Note tab of the RE
  • [MBS-3498] – Editing tracklists on any release which has been through an artist split fails.
  • [MBS-3601] – Incorrect "Artist as credited" displayed and impossible to edit track artist in release editor
  • [MBS-3804] – Entering "Edit barcodes" edit should not be possible if nothing is being changed
  • [MBS-3808] – Internal server error searching for edits
  • [MBS-3813] – Release editor gets stuck on tracklist tab saying there are errors when there are none
  • [MBS-3814] – Guess case broken in the RE
  • [MBS-3816] – Track parser displays "This is placeholder text" instead of instructions (or nothing)
  • [MBS-3831] – "There were one or more errors, please check the following fields: " after changing the capitalization of one letter
  • [MBS-3836] – Tracklist tab showing only the first track when importing a CD stub
  • [MBS-3849] – RE: Can’t import FreeDB releases through Add Disc
  • [MBS-3858] – Tracklist duplication with equal sub-second track durations
  • [MBS-3864] – importing a cd stub only gives you the first track in the track editor
  • [MBS-3908] – Edit numbers in edit notes should not be parsed when they are on different lines

Improvement

  • [MBS-89] – Subscribed artist e-mails should be optional
  • [MBS-2924] – timeline.js should use MB.html
  • [MBS-3239] – Subscription emails > Option to receive weekly
  • [MBS-3356] – Seeded add release (copied from existing release) doesnt link tracks to recordings of copied release
  • [MBS-3684] – Improve sorting of the "Releases with superfluous data tracks" report
  • [MBS-3743] – Move the trackparser (basic view) on the tracklist tab to the "Add Disc" dialog.
  • [MBS-3892] – Display artist disambiguation comments on mouse over

New Feature

  • [MBS-3899] – Report: Discogs pages attached to multiple release groups

Task

  • [MBS-3911] – Remove all "DeferredUpdate" code

Sub-task

  • [MBS-3733] – Add create/get session logging to release editor, to debug MBS-3379 / MBS-3590.

Have Your Say In Scheduling

In an effort to bring the community into our development process more, I (ocharles) have built a new little application to help the MusicBrainz community decide exactly what we should focus on. I present to you, the Scheduling Game!

The Scheduling Game
The Scheduling Game

The idea behind this little application is to let the community quickly scan through open issues and decide when they believe they should be fixed. Each editor is presented with 3 options:

  1. Within 3 months. This ticket must absolutely be fixed within 3 months from now.
  2. Within 12 months. This ticket should be fixed within a year from now. This means the ticket should be fixed within the year, but is not critical for the next 3 months
  3. Unscheduled. This issue is not pressing and can be fixed much later.

Later, when issues have been voted on by enough people, the developers will try and decide how to schedule work to best fit the needs of the community.

A few disclaimers… Firstly, this is just an experiment! We don’t know how well it will work, though initial testing has shown it to already be quite useful. Secondly, it’s not really much of a game, but I wanted to give it a cute name (I know how picky everyone can be!). Currently only a subset of open tickets are available for voting on – specifically tickets in the “NGS + 1” and “Post NGS” milestones on JIRA, as these milestones are in need of a sorting.

The scheduling game is currently live on my server at http://scheduling.ocharles.org.uk/. You can have a look at the current (anonymous) votes at http://scheduling.ocharles.org.uk/results. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me in IRC as ocharles or email oliver@musicbrainz.org. Happy voting!