nightlies vs stable – How different are they?

[Anonymous]

Sorry to post such a basic question, but I’ve looked carefully but can’t see this information anywhere on the website, and I might be leaping to conclusions.

I’ve used 0.2.x stable releases for a while on NSLU2 serving a ROKU Soundbridge. It works great, and I’ve become quite attached to it!

I see that you have nightlies builds. Am I right in thinking this is a completely separate branch off the 0.2.x stable release and by now is very different from the stable build (which has only been updated for itunes compatibility fixes)? If this is true, how different are they?

What are the requirements for the nightlies? Do I need an SQL server installed on the NSLU2 (I see SQL mention a lot)?

Also I see firefly is coming out of your nightlies? Presumably that means that this version is now fairly stable?

:unsure: I’m just trying to judge if I should invest the time installing from the nightlies? It is hard to distill out what the new features are, and how stable things are.

Thanks. JamesCC

[rpedde]

Yes, the 0.2.x line is nothing but fixes for 0.2.0. Nightlies is what was going to be 0.3.0, but will probably be “firefly media server 1.0”. I expect this in a couple weeks.

1. Nightlies use sqlite as a database backend, rather than gdbm. Mostly that doesn’t have any effect, except it’s easier to interface with the music database from outside the program.

2. Smart playlists are stored in the database, and can be edited via the web interface (the “smart” tab on the web ui).

3. Nightlies have the rsp protocol (the new soundbridge protocol) and serve much faster to a soundbridge.

4. Nightlies can do transcoding — converting .ogg, .flac, and other formats to .wav, so your soundbridge (or other device) can listen to other kinds of music. (Doens’t work in rsp right now)

5. Nightlies works on windows

6. Major web interface improvements & ajaxification (not all of which are completely done now)

7. The regular minor fixes and improvements — support for front-fow, support for serving m4v video, better support for compilations, better aac tag reading, etc.

But yeah. Nightlies is rapidly progressing toward a stable release in the next few weeks.

— Ron

[jamescc]

I look forward to “firefly media server 1.0”, and I’ll make the changeover then.

Thanks for clarifying, and thanks for all the work!
JamesCC

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