2012-12-27

Progress report from the December hack day

For the third time, we've met up for the monthly gPodder Hack Day, where people involved in gPodder and related projects meet up in Vienna and discuss and push forward gPodder and the gPodder Web Service.


On December 22nd, the Hack Day December 2012 took place at the Metalab in Vienna. Here's a short list of what we have done:
  • Bug 1728: Decided to close as WONTFIX, and described how the user can patch the required changes in manually
  • Released gPodder 2.20.3 for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5
  • QML UI: Refreshed UI with Sheet for Subscribe UI, Pull down to refresh and a (hopefully) nicer visual style
  • Created an initial Extensions page with some basic information
  • Updated the information on the gpodder.org start page (extensions, etc..)
  • First work on Auto-Flattr support for gpodder.net (the website) - it's still a WIP
  • Bug 1729: Add disable_in=win32 to a few extensions
  • Add smart grouping of extension context menu
  • Add Flattr option to the episode context menu
Also, the preparations for gPodder 3.4.0 were done, and (as you probably already saw) gPodder 3.4.0 was released the day after the hack day. Thanks to all for attending, and see you again in January for the Hack Day January 2013.

2012-12-23

gPodder 3.4.0 "Quiet Earth" released

A new release of gPodder 3 is out, this time the first one since about 3 months, and bringing with it some nice improvements and refinements. I hope you'll like this one :) As this release combines the changes of roughly three months of work, the ChangeLog is a bit longer this time.
  • QML UI (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan on the N950 and N9)
    • Check for new episodes via "Pull down to refresh"
    • Subscribe to new podcast list is now a QML Sheet
    • Open show note links in browser (bug 1556)
    • Fix back button behavior (bug 1677)
    • New episode list model (speeds up scrolling)
    • Various smaller clean-ups and UI improvements
  • Gtk UI
    • Fix wrong artwork in podcast settings (bug 1675)
    • Don't auto-update when offline (bug 107)
    • Import titles from OPML / directory (bug 1711)
    • Integrate shownotes into main window
    • Don't require Gtk+ 2.24 in .ui file
  • Web UI
  • Command-line interface (gpo)
  • YouTube
    • Fix the new 403 issue (bug 1665)
    • Gtk UI for video quality selection (pull request 19)
    • Add support for https:// links
    • Remove dependency on OrderedDict
    • Fix downloading on Harmattan
  • Extensions
    • Improvements to the extension system
    • New extension: update_feeds_on_startup (bug 1656)
    • New extension: Enqueue in media player (bug 1583)
    • Updated: TED Talks Subtitle Downloader Extension
    • Groups and submenus in episode list context menu
    • Add disable_in=win32 to a few extensions (bug 1729)
  • Clean-ups and refactoring
    • Remove old api.py module
    • Remove podcast_id accessor functions (bug 1696)
    • Don't warn about system files on Windows (bug 1712)
    • Handle mygpoclient's MissingCredentials exception
    • Util: Python 2.6 compatibility fix
    • Vacuum minidb-based databases too (bug 1721)
    • gpodder.util: Use gpodder.ui.win32 for new code
  • Flattr integration
    • Reload when pressing play in the shownotes (bug 1684)
    • Use util.sanitize_encoding for the flattr payment-url
    • Add Flattr option to the episode context menu
  • Network connectivity detection
    • Basic Offline mode support (bug 107)
    • Offline mode detection for OS X (bug 107)
    • Linux: Detect PPP as Internet connection (bug 1702)
  • Other changes
    • Download strategy: Only keep latest (bug 188)
    • Download: Rate-limiting for progress updates
    • Device sync: Per-podcast sync option (pull request 22)
    • Updated translations from source (+German translation)
    • Vimeo: Fix downloading of Vimeo videos
As always, a detailed changelog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/3.4.0.

Download: gpodder-3.4.0.tar.gz
md5sum: 1fc04fdc8ff3666316cd7fa74400d30e
sha1sum: 04e079c19a82f8c0f4c154d61921ceb907921e67

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Thanks to all users who supported the gPodder project by providing bug reports, patches, documentation, feedback or donations / Flattrs. Special thanks to our first-time contributors for this release: Andreas Piesk, Chionsas, Daniel Schaal, Josh Mondragon, Sean Munkel and Simon Schubert - keep those patches coming!

2012-12-22

gPodder 2.20.3 "The Odd Pod" released

As the YouTube fix in version 2.20.2 didn't totally fix the downloads for gPodder 2 users, the fixes integrated into the development version of gPodder 3 have also been backported to version 2.x, so that all Maemo 5 (and Maemo 4) users can also enjoy YouTube downloads again. In addition to that, the Spanish translation has also been updated:
  • YouTube fixes (bug 1665, backported by Andreas Piesk)
  • Updated Spanish translation (by Simó Albert i Beltran)
Again, we don't really support or develop the 2.20.x branch (except for regression fixes when the time allows it), it is recommended for all users to upgrade to gPodder 3.

Because Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 are not supported anymore in gPodder 3, we provide occasional updates to 2.20.x for these platforms, so that users using the N800, N810 or N900 are not left out in the cold.

Packages for Maemo will be prepared soon.

Download: gpodder-2.20.3.tar.gz
md5sum: 397b4cd542362454598d553fcfdad5b2
sha1sum: 1f58c7d96c4e62cf20d682123ca35bae653bb096

2012-11-18

Progress report from the November hack day

Since October this year, parts of the gPodder team meet up every month now in Vienna to work on the project in person, which allows us do better discuss design decisions, help each other with understanding the code, and push forward different parts of the gPodder sub-projects (gPodder itself, libmygpo-qt, gpodder.net, etc...).

This month's hack day took place this weekend. Among other things, we fixed bug 1711, integrated the episode shownotes window into the main window (this still needs some more work, but in general I think having the shownotes in the main window as extra pane is nicer than having a separate window pop up) and removed the long-deprecated gpodder.api module. Stefan restructured the API documentation for gpodder.net, which should make it easier to find your way around all the features our web service provides. As always, Stefan also spend some time getting some bugfixes and UI improvements integrated and deployed. As the extension system in the gPodder client gets more and more uses, Bernd worked on improving it by adding categories and new metadata fields that allow us to set extensions to be mandatory in certain UIs (e.g. we always want to load the Unity integration extensions if the user happens to run Unity, without requiring the user to hunt down the extension and manually activate it). In general, these changes should improve the usability of extensions in the long run. A student from the project group working on a gpodder.net client app for Android has also joined us for the first time, and we hope to see more from this project soon.

Thanks to all who attended, and see you next time in December.

2012-10-13

libmygpo-qt 1.0.6 release

A long time (nearly a year) passed since the last libmygpo-qt release.
Today there was the first gPodder hackday (of many more to come) and so it was time to fix some bugs, test the library a little bit and make a new release.

I'm looking for contributors, so if you wanna work on a interesting library used atm by Amarok, Clementine & Nokia Podcasts, drop me a line.

Changes in 1.0.6:
-) added support for DeviceSync API. This API makes it possible to set up synchronization with existing gpodder.net devices from inside your application
-) set Contenttype Header to avoid warnings with Qt 4.8
-) some fixes & enhancements to CMake build system

Where to get libmygpo-qt?
Tarball: http://stefan.derkits.at/files/libmygpo-qt/libmygpo-qt.1.0.6.tar.gz
md5sum: dd07ccc88eac954a3860aeda96aab7b1
sha1sum: 7970c4c43cab4862e220b4239491f2bac2c36f75

Some more important Links for libmygpo-qt:
Project Website: http://wiki.gpodder.org/wiki/Libmygpo-qt
Git Repo: https://github.com/gpodder/libmygpo-qt
Doxygen Documentation: http://stefan.derkits.at/libmygpo-doc/ gpodder.net API: http://wiki.gpodder.org/wiki/Web_Services/API_2 Bugreports: http://bugs.gpodder.org 
Contact: gpodder@freelists.org 

--- Infos about libmygpo-qt --- 
What is libmygpo-qt?
libmygpo-qt is a Qt/C++ Library wrapping the gPodder.net Webservice. It was created as part of a University Course & it is used in Amarok (since 2.4.1) with the new gpodder.net Service, that makes the gpodder.net Podcast Directory available from within Amarok. Also it is used in Nokia Podcasts and will be used in Clementine from v1.1 onwards.

2012-09-24

gPodder 3.3.0 "Intermission" released

It's time for another great gPodder release, catching up with all the great changes that we got into the codebase in the last two months. This release includes the bugfix for the YouTube download problem that users were experiencing recently. Here's a summary of the changes:
  • Gtk UI
    • Podcast dialog: Section changing and Flattr bug (bug 1636)
    • Improvements to the Flattr Integration
  • Extensions
    • Minimize on start (bug 1633)
    • TED Talks Subtitles (pull request #9)
    • Gtk status icon (bug 1495)
    • Correct typo in the rename_download extension
  • Device Synchronization
    • Fix syncing with utf8-incompatible file names
    • Sortable dates for file names on sync device
  • Translations
    • New translation: Persian (Iran)
    • Updated translations: Basque, Galician, Hebrew, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and German
  • YouTube Integration
    • Fix YouTube download URL resolving (bug 1665)
    • Parse error messages, improve downloading
  • Feedcore (Feed Parsing)
  • QML UI (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan / N950 / N9)
    • Filters for unfinished downloads (bug 1655)
    • Show pubdate and file size (bug 1640)
    • Remove remaining Maemo 5 (Fremantle) support
    • Remember episode list scroll position (bug 1660)
    • Honor pause_subscription flag (bug 1641)
    • Download resuming (bug 1487)
  • New and Removed Core Features
    • Remove moving files to the "Unknown" folder (bug 1612)
    • Respect GPODDER_DOWNLOAD_DIR in the environment (bug 466)
  • Bugfixes
    • Decode enclosure filename properly (bug 1663)
    • Use sanitize_filename function (bug 1638)
    • Model: Fix update issues with custom feeds
    • Util: make object_string_formatter more robust
  • Various minor bugfixes, clean-ups and corrections

As always, a detailed changelog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/3.3.0.

Download: gpodder-3.3.0.tar.gz
md5sum: 8bc40207b74621b8ee97051d6890918d
sha1sum: e48136d5d19b4c4d2e52d54d7a805655481dff4e

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.


Thanks to all users who supported the gPodder project by providing bug reports, patches, documentation, feedback or donations / Flattrs. Special thanks to our first-time contributors for this release: Amiad Bareli, Arne Stierman, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Danilo Shiga, Jörg Thalheim, Maurizio Ballo, Mohammadreza Abdollahzadeh, Nikolaos Papagrigoriou and Rafi Rubin - keep those patches coming!

gPodder 2.20.2 "Uniblab" released

Due to recent changes to the YouTube website, which broke YouTube downloads for gPodder users, a new version of the gPodder 2.20.x branch has been released. gPodder 2.20.2 combines all changes in the "two" branch that have been added there since the last release in February with the YouTube fixes from the master branch:
  • CLI: Line length detection bug (patch by Eugene Nikolsky, bug 1598)
  • YouTube: Fix broken YouTube downloading (bug 1665)
As we don't really support or develop the 2.20.x branch (except for these fixes for regressions when the time allows it), it is recommended for all users to upgrade to gPodder 3.

Because Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 are not supported anymore in gPodder 3, we provide the occasional updates to 2.20.x for these platforms, so that users using the N800, N810 or N900 are not left out in the cold.

Packages for Maemo have been uploaded to Extras-Devel for Fremantle and Diablo, they will be promoted to Extras-Testing soon and from there to Extras when QA finishes.

Download: gpodder-2.20.2.tar.gz
md5sum: b7f677e81cdcdb8a8b6ac7c08e8ab716
sha1sum: ed1554ce8db425f4023634c0c37132bf0cc5affa

2012-08-10

Ads on gpodder.net

We recently upgraded our server for gpodder.net, which should have had a positive affect one the overall site performance. At the same time, it also affected our hosting budget, which is currently covered mostly by our private money and occasional donations (thanks to all donors, by the way!).

Therefore we recently started experimenting with Google AdSense on gpodder.net. The ads are shown at the bottom of most pages, and should not distract from the page itself. As it is not our intention to make money with other people's data, ads are disabled on podcast and episode pages, but are currently shown on all other pages, such as the directory, toplists, your subscription lists, etc.

The advertisement experiment will probably last for up to three month, after which we should know if it is worth the trouble of having ads on the site. If we decide to keep the ads, there will be some way of getting rid of them, maybe by donating, becoming some kind of premium user, etc. This still needs to be decided, and input is always welcome!

Please post your comments and thoughts on the ads either here or to the gPodder mailing list. Thanks!

2012-08-09

Avoiding re-parsing of unchanged feeds

I've recently been thinking of an idea to speed up feed parsing in gPodder in cases where the feed contents don't change (i.e. no new or changed episodes), but the server doesn't support E-Tag or If-Modified-Since headers.

Right now, whenever gPodder updates a podcast feed, it sends the E-Tag and Last-Modified headers to feedparser, which will use it to make a conditional HTTP request. In case the server supports it, this will avoid parsing (and downloading) the whole feed, and the server will just tell the feedparser "Nothing new", which in turn will finish the feed update for gPodder - avoiding both the download of the whole feed data, and the parsing inside feedparser and gPodder.

Now, the idea here is that on mobile devices like the N9, we want to avoid CPU usage as much as possible (in addition to keeping the traffic down if possible). One idea now would be to calculate a hash over the downloaded feed content, and remember that hash. In cases where the server doesn't support E-Tag or If-Modified-Since, this could effectively avoid having to parse the feed again. Of course, a hash of the feed contents can only be calculated if the content is downloaded first, so this won't allow for avoiding re-downloads, but in general, I guess that it could improve performance on devices where parsing takes up a non-trivial amount of time.

This might need some experimentation if it is effective in the general case. One idea could be to check the gpodder.net Top 100 podcasts lists and see how many of them support E-Tag and If-Modified-Since and how many of them would benefit from having this special "content hash" in place to avoid re-parsing.

The issue has been filed here, let's see if it's something that could go upstream: feedparser issue 370

Update: Patch added for gPodder and feedparser, both patches can be found in gPodder bug 1634.

2012-07-28

gPodder 3.2.1 bugfix release for N9 users

This is a quick fix-up for bug 1627, which has affected several N9 users. gPodder 3.2.1 is the same as 3.2.0, but with a fix in the packaging (postinst) that will make sure that installation and symlinking (optification) works properly, even if leftover files from previous gPodder installations are in place.

tl;dr: gPodder 3.2.1 will appear on your N9 as an update soon (for both AFM and Nokia Store users), and it will fix your startup problems. A temporary fix is also available as .deb for all users who can't wait ;)

Also, if you are a N9 user and your 3.2.0 update worked fine, you can ignore this (the bug didn't affect all users) - you are affected by this bug if after installation your gPodder app does not start at all.

For all other platforms, 3.2.0 is the latest version, and there will never be a "3.2.1" release to avoid confusion (we'll simply bump the next official release to a higher number to get all platforms back in sync). The version bump is because Nokia Store uploads require "x.y.z" version numbers, and don't support Debian package revisions ("x.y.z-r"), which would really be what we want to have here, since it's really just a packaging change (for those not familiar with Debian packaging: "3.2.0-1" would be the first Debian package revision, and if the packaging changes without a new upstream version, the second revision would be called "3.2.0-2", so think of "3.2.0 for N9" as "3.2.0-1" and think of "3.2.1 for N9" as "3.2.0-2" - confused yet? ;).

Some background info: Since the 3.1.2 release (not to be confused with 3.2.1 ;), gPodder for the N9 installs into /opt, and then symlinks itself into /usr where appropriate, whereas older versions simply installed into /usr. The whole optification problem has quite some history (it started with Maemo 5 and lack of free space on the root partition), but isn't relevant to the N9 anymore (there's enough space on rootfs now). Still, Nokia Store QA has a rule that says that most files (apart from some exceptions) have to go into /opt. For 3.1.2 (again, that's not the same as 3.2.1), I therefore made postinst/prerm scripts that link files installed from /opt into /usr (basically what maemo-optify did back in the day, but Harmattan SDK doesn't have maemo-optify anymore, and on the AFM OBS, I can't just install build-dependencies like that). The symlinking failed when leftover files were sitting in /usr at installation time. The details on what the problem was can be found in bug 1627 - thanks to all who reported the problem, and a special thanks to Reiner for taking the time to investigate the problem (I personally never experienced this bug on my own N9, otherwise I would have had fixed it before the release ;).

2012-07-25

gPodder 3.2.0 "The Great Radish Famine" released

We've been on a short summer break the last two months, and have waited to release this version until we got Flattr support and MP3 player device sync back into mainline gPodder. This means that packagers can now start packaging gPodder 3 for their distributions if they have been keeping back because of the device sync features. The device sync patches have been ported from gPodder 2.x by Joseph Wickremasinghe and the Flattr support was mostly implemented by Bernd Schlapsi - thanks to both of them for the great support! Other fixes:
  • QML UI: Show cover art in "All episodes" (bug 1602)
  • Add "on_channel_context_menu" (patch by Nick Stevens)
  • MP3 player device sync support (bug 1579, by Joseph Wickremasinghe)
  • Threading: Use util.run_in_background to spawn threads
  • QML UI: Set title bar text for multi-select sheet
  • QML UI: Scroll episode list when opening last item
  • Gtk UI: Initial hack for embedded shownotes display
  • CLI: Show more of the title when updating feeds
  • Flattr integration (bug 1576, by Bernd Schlapsi)
  • DB schema: Cleaner upgrades, fix column order
  • Updated translations and various bug fixes
As always, a detailed changelog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/3.2.0.

md5sum: 29587ee5d88c9802a862ec41686bdd52
sha1sum: bd363a488338455144f4a994d89b204d62dc69f4
 
For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Thanks to all users who supported the gPodder project by providing bug reports, patches, documentation, feedback or donations / Flattrs.

2012-05-28

gPodder 3.1.2 "Capture the Moon" released

Another month has passed, so it's once again time for your monthly fix of gPodder updates. This month brings mostly improvements to the translations, the Web UI and CLI / QML UI updates:
  • Web UI
    • Now based on JQuery Mobile
    • Add Episode details page
    • Streaming audio using HTML5 <audio>
  • Command Line UI ("gpo")
    • Fix line length calculation for byte strings (bug 1598)
  • QML UI / MeeGo Harmattan
    • Option to hide podcasts in Music app
    • Make episode list tool button wider
  • Tooling / setup.py
    • Allow "--help install" on command line
    • Manual page install path option (for easier FreeBSD packaging)
  • Translations and translation tooling
    • tools/i18n: Fix merge-from-transifex.sh script
    • New translations: Catalan, Spanish MX, Indonesian
    • Updated translations from Transifex
    • Updated German translation
As always, a detailed changelog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/3.1.2.

md5sum: a2076ff51beb2f99bf42f2b3c0cb756f
sha1sum: 3a567b2b2f33e1d5cc42787a44cb4add006b3fb4

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not yet contain the MP3 player syncing feature. This is also the reason why the Ubuntu PPA won't be updated to the 3.x releases yet. Users depending on MP3 player syncing are recommended to stay on gPodder 2.20.1 until we get MP3 player syncing into the 3.x releases. When MP3 player syncing lands in 3.x, we will start updating the Ubuntu PPA again. Ubuntu users not requiring the MP3 player sync feature can use gPodder 3 packages from Debian Experimental in the meantime. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!

2012-04-29

gPodder 3.1.1 "The Preachification of Convincing John" released

Our monthly release cycle continues with this small update to your favorite media aggregator. The Gtk+ UI (for Desktop operating systems) regained the "Open Download Folder" menu item for the podcast list, while the QML UI gained multi-episode selection menus for downloading, deleting and playing back multiple episodes. Some minor bugs were also fixed. Here's the list of changes:
  • Gtk UI: Reintroduce "Open Download Folder" menu item
  • Fix "gPodderDownloadHTTPError' object has no attribute 'errcode'
  • CLI: Fix error handling bug with strerror
  • JSON Config: Convert float to int (bug 1590)
  • QML UI: Implement multi-episode selection (bug 1594)
  • QML UI: Selection menu for multi-selector (bug 1463)
As always, a detailed changelog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/3.1.1.

md5sum: dcf70c4913278a05a5a59ed74a080945
sha1sum: 84c14cdb73045b00b541a173a0f70662c931346f

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not yet contain the MP3 player syncing feature. This is also the reason why the Ubuntu PPA won't be updated to the 3.x releases yet. Users depending on MP3 player syncing are recommended to stay on gPodder 2.20.1 until we get MP3 player syncing into the 3.x releases. When MP3 player syncing lands in 3.x, we will start updating the Ubuntu PPA again. Ubuntu users not requiring the MP3 player sync feature can use gPodder 3 packages from Debian Experimental in the meantime. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!

2012-04-20

Talk slides from Semana da Ciência e Tecnologia

On Tuesday, I've given a talk about the history and development methodology of and in the gPodder project at the Science and Technology Week in Evora, Portugal. You can find more details on the talk page or take a look at the slides.


You can download the slides PDF here: gPodder talk 2012-04-17

The target audience for this talk were students who want to get involved in open source development, and who know about the general development topics, but want to know more about what infrastructure and content is needed to maintain a proper open source project.

I've been doing talks about gPodder from different perspectives since 2008, the next one will be at the Tizen Conference 2012 in San Francisco - with focus on mobile development and the web service. If you want me to give a talk about open source development at your event, company or meetup, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do for you.

2012-03-27

gPodder 3.1.0 "The Discipline of D.E." released

A new release of gPodder is out. This version brings the new extensions system, with already quite a few of the old "hooks" ported. The extensions framework will also be used to bring back MP3 player sync capabilities in future versions, but this feature didn't make it into 3.1.0. Other changes include a re-designed and improved QML UI for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan (with the ability to lock the screen into portrait-only mode), and various improvements to the Gtk UI, including a live "progress icon" in the episode list for downloads in progress. Windows users will be happy to know that gPodder now checks for updates and offers to download a newer version when one is available (this feature can be disabled in the configuration). The configuration is now saved in a JSON file instead of a .ini-style file to accomodate for the flexible configuration options of the new extension modules.

Download: gpodder-3.1.0.tar.gz
md5sum: fb50e0cec65dabebbbd6e798bd17122c
sha1sum: dd9d35aa81fc50e5ca4c7240111bf6be5502b57e

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page. A special thanks to Bernd Schlapsi, who has devoted much of his time getting the extensions framework ready and the hook scripts ported.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not yet contain the MP3 player syncing feature. This is also the reason why the Ubuntu PPA won't be updated to the 3.x releases yet. Users depending on MP3 player syncing are recommended to stay on gPodder 2.20.1 until we get MP3 player syncing into the 3.x releases. When MP3 player syncing lands in 3.x, we will start updating the Ubuntu PPA again. Ubuntu users not requiring the MP3 player sync feature can use gPodder 3 packages from Debian Experimental in the meantime. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!

2012-02-18

gPodder 2.20.1 "Rosey the Robot" released

This is a bugfix release for the 2.20.x series of releases (mostly for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 support). You probably don't need or want this update - the current recommended version is gPodder 3.0.4, which has been released a few weeks ago. Work is currently ongoing on a new feature release of gPodder 3.

This release of gPodder fixes some bugs in the Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 versions of gPodder that have been found since the 2.20 release in October 2011 (bugs 1559, 1562 and 1492). New packages will be available in Maemo Extras soon. Though we highly recommend all users of gPodder on the Desktop to upgrade to gPodder 3.x, you can still update your version of gPodder to 2.20.1 using the source tarball if you haven't made the jump to gPodder 3 yet:

Download: gpodder-2.20.1.tar.gz
md5sum: 6ddb62c4d61023f93c12646bc762e61b
sha1sum: 5955cc3c2f084669aa41c17f19d1261af67c4faf

As always, the detailed ChangeLog is available at gpodder.org/changelog/2.20.1

Thanks to Jonas Kölker, who provided a patch to backport support for YouTube playlists from gPodder 3. This release has been tested on Maemo 4 (Diablo), Maemo 5 (CSSU Testing) and on Ubuntu 12.04's development version.

2012-01-24

gPodder 3.0.4 "Weekend Vampire" released

A new release of gPodder is out! In the last two weeks, there have been many improvements that already warrant a new release now (the second one this month). Some of the generic changes:
  • Basic support for Python 3 (needs 2to3, CLI only for now, see README)
  • Various improvements to the episode title prefix elimination
  • Tooling: HTTP authentication test tool (bug 1539)
  • Tooling: New maintenance utility: merge-from-transifex.sh
The text mode interface "gpo" has also received some new features and fixes. More features are planned for upcoming releases to make "gpo" a very good alternative to other command line podcatchers. Here are the changes for this release:
  • New commands for gpodder.net: "search" and "toplist"
  • Show titles in "gpo list" output (bug 1493)
  • "gpo list" now highlights disabled podcasts
  • "gpo webui" will start the Web UI server
  • New manpage with explanations and usage examples
  • Various minor bugfixes and improvements
Most changes from the "harmattan" branch (which contains N9-specific customizations) have been merged into the master branch, reducing the difference between the two branches:
  • Merged code fixes from the "Harmattan" branch
  • QML UI: Use Harmattan Qt Quick Components
  • QML UI: Remove empty menu actions
The translations have also been updated for this release: Danish, Greek, Spanish, French, Galician, German, Hebrew, Italian, Kazakh, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Turkish. New translations have also been added: Basque and Chinese. Thanks to all our Transifex translators!

Detailed ChangeLog: gpodder.org/changelog/3.0.4

Download: gpodder-3.0.4.tar.gz
md5sum: 747100bd088393a253459211157927d5
sha1sum: 2a70bc049594500ce57d033c406183f667e94cf9

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not yet contain the MP3 player syncing feature. This is also the reason why the Ubuntu PPA won't be updated to the 3.x releases yet. Users depending on MP3 player syncing are recommended to stay on gPodder 2.20 until we get MP3 player syncing into the 3.x releases. When MP3 player syncing lands in 3.x, we will start updating the Ubuntu PPA again. Ubuntu users not requiring the MP3 player sync feature can use gPodder 3 packages from Debian Experimental in the meantime. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!

2012-01-18

Better gpodder.net Performance, Step 1: CouchDB

The performance of gpodder.net has been pretty bad for quite a while, and we've been constantly working on improvements.

One part of this effort was the migration of the gpodder.net codebase from a MySQL backend to CouchDB. As of today, this migration is finished and gpodder.net has all its data in a CouchDB database. While this won't be the final solution to all (performance) problems, it should at least be a slight improvement, with lots of potential to optimize and scale.

The next step will probably be some new servers, but we're currently negotiating the deal. I hope I can reveal more information in a few weeks.

Apart from performance improvements there should now be also more time to work on new features. If you have some idea that you'd like to see in gpodder.net, let us know through Get Satisfaction or the bugtracker.

2012-01-09

gPodder 3.0.3 "Our Man in Toyland" released

As you might have noticed by now, we are back to our usual one-release-per-month schedule. This January release of gPodder brings improvements to the N9 integration (including support for the cable headset button), support for downloading content from Vimeo video feeds, fixes and improvements to the common prefix elimination feature and some bug fixes:
  • Add support for the N9 cable headset (bug 1526)
  • Gtk UI: Add "Mark episodes as old" menu item
  • Support for Vimeo video feeds (bug 1529)
  • Common prefix elimination improvements
  • Don't purge in-progress downloads (bug 1534)
  • Gtk UI: Add padding right to the pill (bug 1533)
  • Auth: Allow "@" in login username for feeds (bug 1521)
  • YouTube: Duration parsing for channel feeds
  • Various UX improvements for the Harmattan QML UI
Detailed ChangeLog: gpodder.org/changelog/3.0.3

Download: gpodder-3.0.3.tar.gz
md5sum:  9f3d092c4f29221e08db72d86ae034ef
sha1sum: 00bbdf281c4e0cfb3ee2b8ba02bc2c47d574d54f

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not yet contain the MP3 player syncing feature. Users depending on MP3 player syncing are recommended to stay on gPodder 2.20 until we get MP3 player syncing into the 3.x releases. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!