Category: Development

Testing the NGS live data feed

If anyone would like to test out the NGS replication, which I’ve setup from the test server, follow these instructions:

  • Download and install the mb_server source code from SVN trunk. Follow these instructions.
  • Set your server type in DBDefs.pm to RT_SLAVE
  • Download and import this dataset.
  • Insert this required row into the database, using our psql program: 
    cd /admin
./psql READWRITE
insert into replication_control values (1, 12, 36169, '2010-01-23 00:00:02.604674+00');
  • Now run admin/replication/LoadReplicationChanges a few minutes after the hour to keep up to date with the data on the test server. Please note that this system may not be stable yet and that we will occaisionally load new data on our test server, which will require you to reload the data on your server.

Good luck!

Database on test server updated

The database on the test server has been updated with the latest data and search indexes to match the latest work that ijabz’ has done. This update was in preparation for testing the replication system, which I’ll invite the general public to try in a few hours.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The passwords on the test server are now the same as the passwords from the main server as of January 23.

Announcing NGS Beta 1!

After many years of discussion, planning and hard work, we’ve finally reached the much anticipated Next Generation Schema Beta 1 release!

For all the information on this release, please take a look at our release notes. Then head over to the test server and play with it!

Most important of all, please note that we are using Jira to keep track of bug for the MusicBrainz server now. Please do not enter bugs for Beta 1 into the old (trac) bug tracker!

Many thanks to the countless people who have helped make NGS a reality!

NGS Beta 1 is coming: Monday January 18

I’m pleased to announce that we’re almost ready to release beta 1 of the much anticipated Next Generation Schema. All of the important core functions are complete and we’ve even done a first round of sanity checking to make sure what what we release will be useful. We won’t have all of the features for NGS done — there will be some things that we simply won’t have finished by then.

But, this release is important since we feel that we want the community to help us take a look at NGS and help us flush out problems before we polish NGS for release.

We’ll have loads of more details and even some documentation for you by next monday. Stay tuned!

MetaBrainz hires Kuno Woudt (warp) as a full time developer!

I’m pleased to announce that the MetaBrainz Foundation has hired its first full time developer! On Februrary 1, 2010, Kuno Woudt will join Oliver Charles on the MusicBrainz development team and both of them will focus to finish NGS as soon as possible. With Kuno we are effectively tripling the engineering capacity we have dedicated to writing code for NGS. This will free me up to focus more on managing the development process as well as focusing on more business development issues. An increased focus on business should allow me to find the extra income to pay Kuno and to keep us in the black!

I’m excited by this development — having dedicated developers working on finishing NGS is what has been needed for several years now. I’m very much looking forward to releasing NGS and then having a number of smaller releases in 2010!

New server image for 2009-05-24 release available

The VMWare image has been updated for the 2009-05-24 server release. The previous image was getting old and updating steps have been reported not easy.

The new image has been upgraded to Debian 5.0, includes a more recent Linux kernel and uses PosgreSQL 8.3 (the required version to work on NGS).

To download and play with the new image, read our VirtualMusicBrainzServer wiki page!

Music Hack Day Boston: Would you like to represent MusicBrainz?

The fabulous Music Hack Day is happening in Boston on November 21-22. Sadly, I will be in London/Hamburg that weekend and can’t make it to Boston. The organizers have requested that we have someone represent MusicBrainz at the hack day. Are there any MusicBrainzers who live in/near Boston who would like to go to the hack day and represent MusicBrainz?

Knowledge of the project, our web interface, MBIDs and our web service would be really useful to have. Please post a comment if you’re interested. And even if you’re not interested in representing MB, it looks to be a great event that you should go to in any case!

UPDATE: Alastair Porter has volunteered! Thanks Alastair!

Picard 0.12

We have released the next version of MusicBrainz Picard. Picard 0.12 includes a lot of bug fixes and new features, including:

  • Support for ratings and folksonomy tags.
  • Live syntax checking for tagger script and naming strings.
  • Embed cover art into WMA and APEv2 tags.
  • New script functions $matchedtracks(), $initials(), $firstalphachar(), $truncate() and $firstwords()
  • New plugin extension point ui_init, allowing plugins to add new UI elements to the main window.
  • A new high quality application icon.
  • Support for originaldate tag. While this is not filled by Picard itself it can be used from within plugins such as the Original Release Date plugin.
  • Write ISRCs from MusicBrainz into tags.
  • CD drive dropdown selection on Linux.
  • Various small improvements to the UI.
  • Updated translations and the option to choose the user interface language.

A complete list of changes be found in NEWS.txt.

Picard 0.12 is available for download for Windows and Linux. The Mac OS X version will be released later, sorry for that. We are still in search for a long term maintainer of Picard on OS X.

Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release.