Improvements to the gPodder command-line interface

For quite some time now, gPodder ships with the "gpo" utility - a command-line utility to carry out some basic tasks (subscribe, update, download, ...) with the gPodder database. For the future version, we have some cool new features that I'd like to share with you today (you can try them out in the "tres" branch of our Git repository):

• Interactive mode (just run "gpo", and you get a "gpo>" prompt), complete with readline support and tab completion :)
  
• Automatic paging of long episode lists ("less"-like scrolling, powered by pydoc)
• Handling of keyboard interrupts in interactive mode

Of course, the feature set of "gpo" does not cover all that's possible right now with the GUI, but it would be easy to extend if someone wants to step up and contribute some features. The latest version, 2.13, already contains some improvements to the CLI, and you already get nice, colored terminal output when updating feeds or downloading episodes.

gPodder 2.13 "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" released

Your monthly load of gPodder release goodness has arrived! The 2.x branch of gPodder is for bugfixes and small enhancements, while the "innovation" happens in the "tres" branch in our Git repository. It is recommended for all gPodder users to upgrade to 2.13 to get the best compatibility with podcast feeds and the latest fixes. Here's a summary of the changes:

• Handle failed feed updates in "gpo" (bug 1264)
• Fix encoding issue in minidb (bug 1088)
• Fix broken YouTube search (Maemo bug 11756)
• OPML Export for Maemo 5 (Maemo bug 11504)
• Always show "Check for updates" on Maemo 5 (Maemo bug 11637)
• Fix problems with MAFW position tracking (Maemo bug 11811)
• Option: Auto-download when on Wi-Fi (Maemo bug 5181)
• Various fixes to the Maemo 5 UI ("Copy" in shownotes, icon refresh)
• Updated translations: Norwegian Bokmål and German

The detailed ChangeLog can be found at gpodder.org/changelog/2.13.

Source download: gpodder-2.13.tar.gz

md5sum: e9f92d5057f7bd97d7c8a7bd471739cd

sha1sum: d87de1ae8cfc6d757b5b957ecda7f5687f69f1b7

The package for Maemo 4 (N800 and N810) is available in Extras right now. gPodder for Maemo 5 (N900) is already in Extras-Testing (please test and vote) and will land in Extras after testing is complete. Packages for Debian will be provided shortly, and the Ubuntu PPA will also be updated with the new version after the Debian package is ready. Thanks to all who were involved in this release. Happy podcatching!

gPodder project ideas for GSoC 2011

In just ten days the application period for Google Summer of Code 2011 mentoring organizations starts, and we here at gPodder HQ will try to become a mentoring organization for the first time :) The gpodder.net web service has gained lots of interest from developers and users around the world, and the gPodder client is one of the best podcatchers on mobile devices, but it's not available for all mobile platforms yet.

If you want to work on a great project this summer, why not work on gPodder? We are collecting ideas for possible projects in our Wiki: GSoC Ideas (feel free to add your own!). If you want to work on a specific project, please get in touch with us via the mailing list. We're looking forward to working with you towards the goal of the best cross-platform, open source podcatcher in the world :)

gpodder.net gets a second server

People have complained about the speed of gpodder.net throughout the day. Sometimes, responses take a few seconds to go through. We've now decided to order a second virtual server to go with the main server, in order to balance the load a bit and split the database for better performance. The new server is already taking care of taking off some load from the main server. You should see better response times and better availability now. Please let us know if you are still experiencing issues.

libmygpo-qt 1.0 released

Stefan, Christian & Felix from the libmygpo-qt team have released version 1.0 of their Qt/C++ client library for gpodder.net. This is the first stable release and is up-to-date with the gpodder.net API Level 2.6.

Source download: libmygpo-qt.1.0.0.tar.gz
md5sum: c766e8f65212a6c35e1873dbbf703137
sha1sum: ff22becf5ba13bedf107035b724b975fce6a36d2

The team is now looking for people interested in helping to package the library for different distributions. If you want to help, please get in touch. You can find more details about the release and links to resources in the official announcement.

As part of their project, Stefan, Christian & Felix have also worked on integrating gpodder.net into Amarok, the KDE media player. You can find a link to their experimental Amarok version in the official announcement (see above) and hopefully their patches will get merged into mainline Amarok in the upcoming months.

We've been celebrating the release of libmygpo-qt 1.0 last week in Vienna together with the team; great to see the gpodder.net web service getting some attention from other developers and being integrated into other applications. If you want to integrate gpodder.net support into your own application, get in touch :)

This is the new location for gPodder news

We have moved our blog and news content over to Blogger. The old news items will be imported at some point in the future. This new blogging system should allow us to keep you updated more regularly with developments of gPodder :)