Podbird reignited
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There has been some more interest in Podbird and what we should do with it moving forward, it was suggested to make a forum post about it so thats what this forums about!
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I believe the progression from the Vivid to the Xenial build introduced a regression wherein you used to be able to have your place in an episode automatically saved when the app closed, but now no longer. Shall test this theory on my new M10 (with Vivid) later.
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I can confirm the issue on the OnePlus One on the RC branch
I've dug into it fairly deeply and the Queue table in the SQLite database in /home/phablet/.local/share/com.mikeasoft.podbird/Databases/ gets wiped as soon as the app is closed
What's in the Podcasts table obviously persists because subscriptions are remembered between sessions
When the app is open and episodes have been added to the queue the Queue table in the SQLite db is populated properly, but that data is then lost once the app is closed or the phone rebooted
It makes it very frustrating to use it as a daily driver podcast playerThere are several other features I'd judge desirable to add if there's a renewed drive on Podbird development
Happy to help with testing & debugging if I can
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I would love to help out. But at the moment the code base is on launchpad and bzr instead of git is needed.
I asked Michael some time ago to move on github or gitlab, but he don't want. -
@stefwe said in Podbird reignited:
I would love to help out. But at the moment the code base is on launchpad and bzr instead of git is needed.
There's a bzr plugin for git so you don't need to learn bzr.
I asked Michael some time ago to move on github or gitlab, but he don't want.
Is that because he has no current interest in the project and can't be bothered?
I gather from other comments that the project has been unmaintained for some time. If that's the case, and assuming there are no licencing issues, then forking is the answer.
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@theare27 said in Podbird reignited:
I've dug into it fairly deeply and the Queue table in the SQLite database in /home/phablet/.local/share/com.mikeasoft.podbird/Databases/ gets wiped as soon as the app is closed
Very interesting. I was trying to debug but I'm not so skilled. Would you like to add info here?
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@alan_g said in Podbird reignited:
I gather from other comments that the project has been unmaintained for some time.
It has been updated recently. I don't know if the developer has as much time as before...
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@CiberSheep
Happy to try killing it while it's in the foreground - see if that impacts at all on what data is retained -
@theare27 Still loses the queue content and the play position within the episode even when the app is in the foreground when killed
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On Telegram someone said that they'd put some time and effort in, if it was hosted on github or gitlab, if there hadn't been any update, for a very long time, I wouldn't mind the idea of rehosting it, but I'm hesident to rehost the code if the original people are still wanting to work on it.
It'd feel like stealing there project, but if its not them working on it, and people would much prefer to host on github or gitlab, then it'd be good if we could get in contact with either Michael Sheldon, or Nekhelesh Ramananthan, and see what they think.
They might give us the go ahead to just rehost and still use the name and logo, etc, etc, or they may require us to rename the app since it would be hosted by different people?
I think it'd be wise to get in contact with them before we do any heavy lifting if that's the road we wish to take.
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@PhoenixLandPirat
Of course the ideal would be for the current maintainers to push on with the project & fix the bugs, but if they've lost interest they should let the community know so that someone else can take it over or so that it can be forkedFor me, and I suspect many others, playing podcasts is an important use case for my device. If development is paused on this and there is no other alternative application available then that's a bad position for UT as a whole to be in
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@theare27 obviously we would all like the project to solder on, but as a community, we have to do it in a way which respects those who had previously made the code.
We have the right to fork the code, it's GPL, right, but just because we have the right to do so, doesn't mean its the first thing we should do, it'd be easier to just fork it and work, but we should contact the two originators first.
I think they'd be happy to see a fork on github, especially if they're not working on it, but I think they'd probably want to know before it happens, even just a "Hi, we've got a few people who'd like to work on podbird, are you still working on it? and would we be able to put the code on github?" kinda thing.
I'm not saying that we have to force people who dont want to work or dont have time to work on the project, work on it, just let them into the loop, so they know what we're doing, and see if they've got plans, you know.
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@PhoenixLandPirat
Yes that's the spirit.If you don't have an email or another to directly contact the original maintainer, I'd suggest to open an issue in their repository asking if they are still interested in the project or how they prefer to fork.
That's what I did for another unmaintained app on the open-store.The maintainer was very pleased to see someone keeping the app alive and useful to others.
My contribution was just rehosting, integrating clickable and building for 16.04
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I'll be happy to help. Ive been working on a forked version of podbird on and off as a personal project. I do have the sqme concern as another commenter regarding switxhing to git (bzr plugin or not).
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@geekvine Just out of interest, does your work give you any insights on what's causing the queue to be lost when the app is closed?
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@theare27 I listen to podcasts 40 hours a week so I never close it but i can look into it.
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@geekvine Restarting the phone also has the same affect for me
It's not that I'm closing the app on a whim, I often end up having to reboot the phone at least once a day -
@alan_g said in Podbird reignited:
Is that because he has no current interest in the project and can't be bothered?
It's more that he hasn't the time to do feature development right now, but is happy to merge things and upload new releases (as he recently did, given the last update in the store is from a month ago).
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@dobey thanks for the info. I'm gonna try to get in touch with him since there seems to be some interest in helping out.
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I always figured the queue being lost was a feature that was missing. If it is a bug that can be resolved that would make Podbird complete as far as I am concerned.
