Ampache :: Developer Blog

This release addresses a non-critical security issue due to unsafe creation of temporary files by a shell script included, but not used by the application. It also fixes a few other minor bugs and adds the ability to install Ampache without full rights on your database server (Hosted Solutions). Take a look at the changelog for complete details.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome Momo-i as a new contributor to Ampache. Momo-i has just started, and already gotten a lot of work done on the translations and improved support for non-latin character sets.

As some have you may have noticed Ampache.org was down for a few hours last night. We had a still unexplained hardware issue on the colo. We've been putting off moving to new hardware for almost two years now. This, however, was the straw that broke the camels back. Sometime in the next week we are moving it over to a new and faster server. I will send another announcement once the migration is complete. There should hopefully be little to no service interruption. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I've decided to move to Angers France. I will be leaving the United States September 17th. Although I hope to have a point release of 3.5.x out before I leave it will all depend on how much paperwork/packing I have to do before I leave. Once I arrive in France it may be up to a month before I have a steady internet connection so development and communication will be spotty. Rest assured that I will resume work on Ampache as soon as I'm settled in France. If anyone happens to know of open jobs system administration in France please send me an e-mail vollmer AT ampache.org.

The checklist for the first point release of 3.5.x is as follows:

• Fix remaining Browse issues after code re-organization
• Complete Tag support
• Add Catalog Filters
• Transition to new API
• Simplified ACL

This is by no means a complete feature list of 3.5.x, simply what I think I might be able to get done before I leave for France.

In other news Kevin Purdy has been hard at work figuring out the iPhone API and has a working concept of Quickplay implemented on the iPhone. Once he manages to wade through the bureaucracy that is Apple it should be available for download. What does this mean? It would give you a native interface for your Ampache collection strait on your iPhone. Once it's been completed I will post an update, with pictures!

Check out the Python based GTK client for Ampache, Git Repoistory - Quickplay. The author, Kevin Purdy just did a whole bunch of updates, including some pretty sweet caching. So if you want a very simple interface to your ampache server with a fully functional GTK based front end check out it out. See a screen shot of it in action below.

In Ampache news, development continues, albeit a little slowly on 3.5.x. I've got a ton of ideas and simply not enough time to implement them all. However already there have been some major performance improvements in 3.5.x along with some menu changes that make things a lot easier to find. I should have some interesting news next Wednesday so Stay tuned.

The second maintenance release for the 3.4 branch has been released. This version includes some back ported functionality as well as numerous minor bug-fixes and translation updates. You can view the full changelog. for additional information. Enjoy!

The SSL Cert for svn.ampache.org was also updated this morning along with some other standard maintenance of ampache.org.

As many of you may have noticed the Wiki recently changed from the integrated Trac wiki to DokuWiki. The reason for the change was to make it easier to create translations of Ampache's core documentation. If you are interested in maintaining a translation of whole, or part of the Wiki please let me know and I'm more then happy to give you write access.

In addition to the Wiki, thanks to a patch from momo-i quite a few translation issue have been corrected in 3.4.x. This means that some of the existing translations need to be updated. I've created a Translations section of the forums to facilitate coordination between translation efforts.

As you can infer from the subject of this post we are nearing another maintenance release for the 3.4.x branch. You can view the current changelog. While there are no security fixes in this release it does fix some statistics and edge case streaming issues. Upgrade before you run into them.

This is the first maintenance release for the 3.4 branch. Along with minor cosmetic bugfixes it corrects some charset related issues found in the 3.4 release. Anyone experiencing issues with non-ascii characters being imported correctly should upgrade to 3.4.1. It also corrects an issue with the translations in the 3.4 release. Due to an incorrectly configured script every single translation was german.

Development has started on the 3.5.x branch. I hope to provide more detailed information about the features I would like to squeeze into the next release, however I'm still finalizing the list. The general goal of the 3.5.x release is to implement features that allow you to more easily find the music you are looking for in your current collection as well as provide an interface for discovering new artists. I hope to leverage sites such as Jamendo, Last.FM and Magnatunes. If you are aware of other similar websites please let me know.

The new T-shirts are proving to be slightly more complicated to get created than I had originally anticipated. I hope to have more information on them early next week as well.

As some of you may have noticed the SVN Repository was down from 12h00 GMT -7 till around 15h00 GMT -7. This was due to a routing issue with my hosting companies ISP. I apologize for any inconvenience. Just as a sidenote, development has already started on 3.5 and there have been a few minor bugs found in the 3.4 stable release, as such I expect to release 3.4.1 sometime in the next month to fix the few cosmetic issues.

Better late then never, the stable release of 3.4 has been released. You can download it here. This release is a little over year in the making. It involved a complete rewrite of Ampache into native PHP5 code in addition to a completely new interface created by Spocky. All 3.3.x themes are incompatible with the 3.4 branch. However it ships with two themes shown below and there are already two user created themes available from the themes section

Classic (Official)	Greysme (Official)
BlueFlower (User)	Vegas (User)

New Logo

Along with the 3.4 Release I'd like to introduce a new Logo. Fraz has served me well for the last few years, but it's time for something new. The logo I've chosen was created by Agnès Champavier. I will be shutting down the Cafepress store that contains all of the old logos and getting new shirts printed locally. Once they've been done I will post more information. Thanks again to everyone who e-mailed me a potential logo. As I stated in the forum post the top 3 people will receive a free shirt with the new logo. I will also be working the new logo in to various parts of the site over the next few weeks.

As promised 3.4-Beta2 has been released, get it while it's hot. Beta2 has some sweeping charset related changes. In order to generate valid XML files the charset of the filenames and song fields are now strictly enforced. A helper script, fix_filenames.inc, is now included in /bin. This script will by default look for filenames that do not match your charset defined in ampache and prompt you to rename them. Democratic play has been flushed out and is now feature complete. There are still some UI enhancements to be made in regards to the democratic play functions but everything should work. Speed improvements were made across the board. There is still a lot of optimization to do before the stable release. The XML API has a large number of additional fields and valid queries to accommodate the needs to some of the users of the API.

There will be a 3rd Beta of 3.4..The hopeful release date of Beta3 is sometime mid April. After that I plan on releasing the stable of 3.4 on May 5th, on the day Ampache turns 7 years old. We will see if I can pull it off. I will be taking vacation from March 22nd through the 28th but hopefully I can cram enough Ampache work around that to meet these deadlines.

I would like to get a simplified version of the current Ampache Logo done. If any graphic artists would like to take a swing and creating a new 'Fraz' for ampache please submit a low and high-rez photo to the Make a new Fraz Logo forum post. The top three submissions will receive a free shirt with the new design (International Shipping not a problem).

Progress is being made again on the next beta of 3.4. I hope to have a release this weekend. Beta2 will have all of the major functionality I plan for the stable release in it's final form, minus future bug-fixes.

There have been a lot of additions to the XML API and a lot of new applications using the API. Although these applications may not have a stable release below is the quick and short list

• Amarok 2 Service
• Coherence - UPNP A/V MediaServer
• Rhythmbox - URL Unknown
• QuickPlay - Simple Python Player

Hopefully sometime in the next week or so I'll be adding an additional page that lists all of the known applications that can use Ampache's API. That's it for now, keep an eye out for a release this weekend.

Hello all, It's been a long time since I've posted or made any substantial progress on Ampache. I've got quite a few things at work keeping me busy, thankfully most of them should be resolved by the first week or so of March. In the mean time I've got a few announcements, First off thanks to Flashk who has contributed a good bit of work to Ampache recently. Second I'm going to tentatively set a goal of the 3.4 Stable release on Ampache's seven year birthday, only 3 more years and Ampache will have been around for a decade!

As always thanks to everyone who has submitted bug reports and patches they are very helpful, keep them coming. When reporting a bug for the development version please always make sure that you upgrade to the latest version as it's likely it's been fixed. Thanks!

I've just added data from the Ampache Last.FM Group to the rightbar. The data is only updated once a week but it gives you some idea of what Ampache users are scrobbling. The data is parsed by a quick little PHP class I wrote, LastFmXml.class.phps, it requires PHP5 and is far from perfect but it will take a LastFM group XML document and parse it into a nice PHP Named Array. Now back to Ampache!