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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

gPodder 3.0.2 "Agent 99" released

A new release of gPodder is out, bringing some refinements and bug fixes to your podcatching experience:

• Updated Mac OS X icon for gPodder 3
• Updated Portuguese translation
• Remove downloading of favicon as cover art
• Custom feeds: Delete episodes when removed from feed
• Improvements to the fake D-Bus module for systems without D-Bus
• Write the default configuration on startup (bug 1511)
• YouTube: Fix pubDate via monkey-patching (bug 1492)
• Common prefix elimination for episodes
• Gtk UI: Avoid errors when querying tooltips of separators
• QML UI: Scrubbing (in the media player) and other tweaks
• Updated translation templates from source
• Updated German translation
• QML UI: Add subscribe info for empty podcast list

Detailed ChangeLog: gpodder.org/changelog/3.0.2.

Download: gpodder-3.0.2.tar.gz
md5sum: b87755c75c6bcf754b73aa5ad028d514
sha1sum: ba547e5472466fe1b18afb72c1e2a5c25561b000

For packages in distributions, see the downloads page.

Please note that the Desktop version of gPodder 3 does not contain the MP3 player syncing feature. See this blog post for more information and add your use cases and offer for volunteering to this wiki page. Thanks for your help!

Common prefix elimination for episode lists

Something that I've been wanting to get into gPodder for a long time has finally landed in our Git repository: Common prefix elimination. We apply this to all episode titles that we show in GUI lists (e.g. in the Gtk UI and the QML UI), and it really helps to show you more information that is useful to you, especially on mobile devices:

On the first screenshot, you can see the Harmattan QML UI of gPodder 3.0.1 showing the Linux Outlaws episode list. As you can see, about half of the screen is "wasted" with information that is global across all episodes. On the second screenshot, you can see the development version of gPodder, showing the exact same screen, but this time with common prefix elimination enabled.

Right now, we have a very conservative algorithm for detecting common prefixes (i.e. it has to be a real common prefix across all episodes) - one could think about improving this with some heuristics, e.g. removing the podcast title in front of episodes, calculating the common prefix of a certain majority of episodes, etc. - I'm interested to see how the user base likes this feature, and if there are situations where this does more harm than good.