MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-08-08

This is a small release since we’ve been resting (and sometimes fully on holiday) for the summer. The most visible change for website users is that the “Ratings” tab for ratable entities is now a “Reviews” tab, and it also includes ratings and reviews from CritiqueBrainz. We used to only display these for release groups – now you can see them for every entity that supports reviews (artists, events, labels, places, recordings, release groups and works). We’re hoping having this reminder that things can be reviewed will encourage more users to have a say and let us know about their favourite – or less favourite – music!

Also: for people running a mirror server who updated to our May schema change and want to use tags and genres: sorry, we broke your tags table. Please check our separate blog post on how to run a script to fix it.

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 chaban and rdswift 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-2022-08-08.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-08-08”

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-07-18

This release is very small, mainly consisting of minor improvements related to genre relationships. We have quite a few of those now, including links to Wikidata and Rate Your Music for pretty much any genre that has matching entries in those sites and links between many genres and their country of origin. We’re also fixing one bug with event setlist display that had probably been there since we introduced events – whoops!

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 chaban and sound.and.vision for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to mfmeulenbelt, outsidecontext and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-07-18.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-07-18”

Picard 2.8.2 released

Picard 2.8.2 is a maintenance release for the recently released Picard 2.8 with fixes for reported issues and updated translations.

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

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.7 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 2.8 and the changes in Picard 2.8.1.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback and reported issues.

Continue reading “Picard 2.8.2 released”

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-07-03

This is a small release in number of tickets, but it finally adds the functionality to add relationships to genres. As such, you can now find out what għana or harsh noise wall actually are by simply reading their Wikipedia extracts. We can also store aliases for genres now, so while we still don’t do anything with that information directly, we do indicate that “hiphop” and “hip-hop” are alternative ways to write “hip hop“. Eventually, the plan is to combine these with the main genre in smart ways.

NB: As a side effect of adding new edit types for genres and genre aliases, the daily subscription emails failed for a few days. After this release the emails are working again, and you should have received the edits for all the missing days in your first email after the update.

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 chaban and selflessself for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to Mellthas, mfmeulenbelt, rinsuki and salo.rock for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2022-07-03.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-07-03”

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-06-20

This release includes the first genre improvements made possible by the May schema change, plus a bunch of small fixes and improvements. Annotation pages have been converted to React; if you notice anything strange with annotations, it might be a new regression so make sure to report it!

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 anshuman73, chaban, Lotheric, selflessself 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-2022-06-20.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-06-20”

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-06-07

We’re back after a bit of post-schema change rest! Because we were recovering from the crazy schema change times, there’s mostly small fixes here. Two changes (the update to React 18 and the change to allow some very long words to wrap) caused a few issues that were found and fixed in beta, but please do let us know if you find any that slipped through! The implementation of some remaining schema change features (more genre options, moods) will hopefully be released in two weeks.

Thanks to adamselene, CatQuest, chaban, darwinx0r, draconx, Jeluang, sheamuspatt, vzell 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!

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

The git tag is v-2022-06-07.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-06-07”

Picard 2.8.1 released

Picard 2.8.1 is a maintenance release for the recently release Picard 2.8 with fixes for reported issues and updated translations.

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

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.7 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 2.8.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback and reported issues.

Continue reading “Picard 2.8.1 released”

Picard 2.8 released

The Picard team is happy to announce that the final version 2.8 of MusicBrainz Picard is now available for download. MusicBrainz Picard is the official tag editor for the MusicBrainz database and helps you get your music collection sorted and cleaned up with the latest data from MusicBrainz.

This release brings many changes, including long requested features like Windows long path support and advanced relationships for huge box sets. See below for the highlights.

Continue reading “Picard 2.8 released”

MusicBrainz schema change release, 2022-05-16 (with upgrade instructions)

We’re happy to announce the release of our May 2022 schema change today! Thanks to all who were patient during today’s downtime as we released everything to our production servers, and thanks to ikerm2003, mfmeulenbelt rinmon and salo.rock for updating the translations.

This is once again a fairly minor release as far as schema changes go, but please do report any issues that you come across, especially related to the propagation of ratings and tags.

New, user-facing changes with this release include withdrawn-only release groups showing in the official overview again (MBS-12208) and the final disappearance of Amazon cover art (MBS-12200). To this regard, the report of releases that have Amazon cover art but no Cover Art Archive front cover will stay available for editors to check their subscribed entities.

Additionally, several small changes will allow, in the next couple of releases, to store more information about genres (including URL relationships) and to recognize and special-case mood tags (MBS-12190). Another new feature that will start to be used in the API and artist credit pages is the addition of MusicBrainz IDs for artist credits, which allow referring to them with a unique and more persistent ID (MBS-11456). Finally, a few more under-the-hood only changes are made, which should ensure better performance for finding artists, events, etc. for all areas contained in a given one, and less bugs when adding and changing tags and ratings.

The area containment changes make use of a new materialized table. Like the ones we added last year, this table isn’t dumped nor replicated, since it is derived entirely from primary table data. Rather, it will be created during migration (or, in a new install, by running the admin/BuildMaterializedTables script) and triggers will be added to keep it up-to-date once it has been built. These triggers are created on replicated servers, too.

The accompanying new version of the search index rebuilder brings performance improvements for both the main server and mirrors, and simplifies maintenance. See the release notes for details.

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

Now, on to the instructions.

Schema Change Upgrade Instructions

Note: Importing the latest data dump is always a valid alternative to running ./upgrade.sh on an existing database, if you’d prefer to also get new data in one go. Just follow the relevant instructions in INSTALL.md. The git tag is v-2022-05-16.1-schema-change. The rest of the instructions here assume an in-place upgrade.

  1. Make sure DB_SCHEMA_SEQUENCE is set to 26 in lib/DBDefs.pm.
  2. If you’re using the live data feed (your REPLICATION_TYPE is set to RT_SLAVE), ensure you’ve replicated up to the most recent replication packet available with the old schema. If you’re not sure, run ./admin/replication/LoadReplicationChanges and see what it tells you; if you’re ready to upgrade, it should say “This replication packet matches schema sequence #27, but the database is currently at #26.”
  3. Take down the web server running MusicBrainz, if you’re running a web server.
  4. Turn off cron jobs if you’re automatically updating the database via cron jobs.
  5. If you’re using the live search indexing, stop it and, assuming sir is under the same directory as musicbrainz-server, run cd ../sir && python2.7 -m sir triggers && cd - && ./admin/psql < ../sir/sql/DropTriggers.sql && ./admin/psql < ../sir/sql/DropFunctions.sql
  6. Switch to the new code with git fetch origin followed by git checkout v-2022-05-16.1-schema-change.
  7. Run cpanm --installdeps --notest . (note the dot at the end) to ensure your perl-based dependencies are up to date.
  8. Run ./upgrade.sh (it may take a while to vacuum at the end).
  9. Set DB_SCHEMA_SEQUENCE to 27 in lib/DBDefs.pm as instructed by the output of ./upgrade.sh.
  10. If your REPLICATION_TYPE is set to RT_SLAVE, change it to RT_MIRROR. (The previous terminology will work for the time being, but is now deprecated.)
  11. If you’re using the live search indexing, assuming again that sir is under the same directory as musicbrainz-server, run cd ../sir && git fetch origin && git checkout v3.0.1 && python2.7 -m sir triggers && cd - && ./admin/psql < ../sir/sql/CreateFunctions.sql && ./admin/psql < ../sir/sql/CreateTriggers.sql and rebuild indexes which takes hours (by running cd ../sir && python2.7 -m sir reindex && cd -) then start it in watch mode (with cd ../sir && git fetch origin && git checkout v3.0.1 && python2.7 -m sir amqp_watch)
  12. Turn cron jobs back on, if applicable.
  13. Restart the MusicBrainz web server, if applicable. It’s also recommended you restart Redis. If you’re accessing your MusicBrainz server in a web browser, run ./script/compile_resources.sh.

Here’s the list of resolved tickets:

Fixed Bug

  • [MBS-5359] – *_tag tables are corrupt and need to be regenerated
  • [MBS-11760] – Removing the last use of a tag does not always remove the tag
  • [MBS-12369] – Standalone databases may be missing foreign keys for the documentation schema

New Feature

  • [MBS-12190] – Add Mood support in the database

Improvement

  • [MBS-11456] – Add MBIDs to artist credits in the database with merge
  • [MBS-12141] – Block tag names that are empty or have uncontrolled whitespace with database constraints
  • [MBS-12224] – Keep tags’ ref_count and aggregate vote counts updated with triggers
  • [MBS-12249] – Add a materialized area_containment table kept up-to-date with triggers
  • [MBS-12256] – Keep rating and rating_count column on *_meta tables up-to-date with triggers
  • [MBS-12313] – Clarify item naming in the Search drop down menu

Database Schema Change Task

  • [MBS-11457] – Drop the series ordering_attribute column
  • [MBS-11755] – Remove unused tags
  • [MBS-12157] – Remove support for Amazon cover art
  • [MBS-12200] – Drop schema objects related to Amazon cover art support
  • [MBS-12225] – Rename “slave” to “mirror” (inclusive language update)
  • [MBS-12250] – Create dbmirror2 schema on production and mirror servers
  • [MBS-12252] – Add edit_genre table
  • [MBS-12253] – Add relationship tables for genres
  • [MBS-12254] – Add genre_annotation table
  • [MBS-12255] – Add genre_alias_type table and make genre_alias consistent

MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-04-18

We’re back with another smallish release, mostly fixing minor bugs. This is our last release before the schema change on May 16; we are taking a one release break to have more time to concentrate on that. Of course you should still let us know if you find we have introduced any new bugs (er… totally intentional easter eggs that is!), but unless they are very serious, we will probably only fix them during the second half of May.

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 arcresu, chaban and Cyberskull, 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-2022-04-18.

Continue reading “MusicBrainz Server update, 2022-04-18”