[mythtv-users] Schedules Direct JSON service on the back burner?

[Thomas Mashos]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 7:56 AM, R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org> wrote:
> On 15/10/14 05:23 PM, Thomas Mashos wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 1:19 PM, R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 15/10/14 02:16 PM, Thomas Mashos wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Joseph Fry <joe at thefrys.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I have noticed that almost all of the discussion on this list has
>>>>> related
>>>>> to
>>>>> the RobertE's XMLTV adaptation to SD's new JSON service... which seems
>>>>> like
>>>>> more of a workaround than anything.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is anyone actually using the JSON service, is there any effort to move
>>>>> things in that direction?  It really does seem like the better
>>>>> solution,
>>>>> though I suspect that we will ultimately need database changes, and
>>>>> perhaps
>>>>> some changes to mythtv-setup (or whatever is to replace it) to manage
>>>>> our
>>>>> lineups.
>>>>>
>>>>> While I suspect that I will have to use the XML solution come Nov 1st,
>>>>> I
>>>>> fear it's simply because adjusting things to support the JSON data
>>>>> isn't
>>>>> getting the attention it deserves.  I know RobertK has a script for the
>>>>> JSON
>>>>> service, but haven't seen any real discussion from folks testing it...
>>>>> thus
>>>>> I am not sure I will be comfortable going that route come Nov1.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Moving to the JSON service has a few challenges.
>>>>
>>>> 1) It requires a JSON grabber. Now IIRC Robert does have a JSON
>>>> grabber, but I believe that the idea is to move to using the JSON
>>>> service via XMLTV (so there is a single codebase for updating guide
>>>> data in MythTV). This requires more work.
>>>>
>>>> 2) Using the JSON service (and thus the JSON grabber) requires more
>>>> user interaction than using the XML DD replacement service. Most agree
>>>> that while the JSON grabber is preferred, it's not ideal to require
>>>> the user to do the amount of work required for the JSON change during
>>>> a minor upgrade (a more natural time for this change would be the
>>>> upgrade from 0.27 to 0.28). IIRC, we cannot do a zero impact upgrade
>>>> for a user and move them to the JSON service, it will require that
>>>> they setup the new grabber.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The JSON service and grabber are still there and working well. The only
>>> 'user interaction' required is during setup. There are the same number of
>>> steps as in an original mythtv setup, only some are done in mythtv and
>>> some
>>> with the sd-utility.
>>> Thereafter, the JSON grabber runs in background without intervention.
>>>
>
>>>
>> While I agree with most of this, my point was that users will update
>> from packages on a fixes branch and expect not a lot is required of
>> them to get what are essentially bug fixes (eg. no new features).
>
>
> Well those who update to 27.4 will get the fix without further work. Those
> who do not wish to update will have to do something.
>

True, but I'm talking about a package update, not an OS update. You
seem to be a Fedora user, so I believe it would just be 'sudo yum
update'.

>> While the move to the JSON grabber is one that is done a single time,
>> it does require the user to go forth and actually do that setup.
>
>
> If you don't want to actually do anything to your box to keep it running
> mythtv, replace it with a Tivo.
>

You seem to be misunderstanding how little work it is needed to fix
this vs the JSON change. All you have to do is a package update, not
an OS update. I think that the occasional package update to your
system is something that we expect users to do on a regular basis, as
it provides both bug fixes and security updates to the packages. While
moving to the JSON grabber isn't a ton of work, I think we can both
agree it is more involved than a simple package update.

I used to have a TiVo. It was decent at what it did, but the interface
was slow, it was limited to recordings only, storage space was
limited, and there was a monthly contract associated with using it.
Perhaps there is some other reason to choose between MythTV and TiVo
other than wanting minimal user required maintenance.

>> Further, somehow we must notify the user to go and do this setup.
>> While some users may be confused about the amount of work that needs
>> to be done, let me clarify that I am not confused about the minor
>> setup work users must do, I just disagree with making them do that
>> work at any point other than a major MythTV version upgrade (eg. 0.27
>> -> 0.28).
>
>
> The Stones gave some cogent advice 45 years ago:
> You can't always get what you want
>
> And Steve Stills played pyschologist with the problem a year or so later:
> Love the one you're with.
>

As long as we are quoting lyrics, after reading your comments I think
of something Third Eye Blind said

"I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend."

>
>> The Mythbuntu team provides daily builds of the fixes branches for
>> various releases of Mythbuntu (see http://www.mythbuntu.org/repos ).
>> The fix was released to MythTV 0.27 today and Mythbuntu had builds
>> available for users within hours of that fix. That means that 90%+
>> (not counting those who build from source) of the users have the fix
>> available to them (although it appears only about 20% take advantage
>> of those builds). We've also done a blog post to try and highlight the
>> issue for users not using those daily fixes builds.
>
>
> THAT is the OTHER fix. And I fully expect that there will be a 27.4 package
> available on rpmfusion within a couple of days. And the daily Mythbuntu
> build is good to go. But you do have to do the install, and... and... Since
> I have never done that, I have no idea if you have to make any changes to
> the setup with mythtv-setup after an upgrade.
>

The other fix? Upgrading your the packages to 0.27.4 is the official
MythTV fix. Anything else is a workaround.

The install is simply "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade".
That is it. There is no setup after that, no rebooting required. You
run one command (technically that is two commands) and your system is
fixed against the Nov 1st issue and also gets any other security and
bug fixes.

>> While I agree (as I think most people do) that the best way is to move
>> forward is using the JSON service, I also believe a zero impact fix is
>> needed until a major upgrade.
>
>
> Not possible. Just NOT possible. One or another fix has to be DONE by
> November 1, 2014. We have no choice. It is useless to whine about when it
> would be 'nice' to do this, and how, but that does not help.
>

Sorry, I guess I should have said minimal impact. I said zero because
as I stated before, we do expect users to do regular package updates
to get both security and bug fixes.

>> Simply because upgrading major versions
>> of MythTV is more of a user involved process. MythTV fixes can be
>> received by a simple apt-get upgrade, however a major MythTV version
>> upgrade requires a new repository to be enabled for most users.
>
>
> Everything I read on this list shows that it is not mythtv upgrades which
> cause major problems, it is OS upgrades. Today, there is a post where
> someone gave up on Ubuntu 14 and went back to 12. That was and is a common
> problem.  Fedora's change to systemd a few versions ago caused a lot of
> chatter as systemd was not/is not particularly well documented about how to
> create working service files. That got figured out in a couple of weeks as
> working files were posted.
>

As I've stated before, you have to do a package date, not an OS
upgrade to receive this fix. Had you read the link I posted (
http://www.mythbuntu.org/repos ) you would notice that the Mythbuntu
developers build 0.27 for 12.04 (as well as 0.28 for 12.04 and many
others. If you don't want to read the page at least go look at the
graphic on it that explains everything).

I did see one user (or possibly two users) that went back to 12.04
from 14.04, out of the 5300+ reported users of 14.04, I would hardly
call that a "common problem". IIRC it was a graphics driver issue
which sounds like it needs more troubleshooting. However the user
instead went back to 12.04 which is fine, as I've previously stated
we're still building 0.27+fixes builds for it.

> I don't know about the 'buntu universe, but the same repos are and have been
> used for all mythtv packages against all Fedora versions since Fedora 4. No
> changes needed. Using ubuntu seems to be its own punishment.
>
> Geoff
>

You have made it abundantly clear that you don't use Ubuntu (I'm going
to just assume that you have no hard feeling against Ubuntu but prefer
Fedora rather than some vitriol hatred of the OS), so let me try to
clarify a few things. I've not used Fedora since Fedora core 6, but
I've been looking through the rpmfusion repos and talking to some RPM
users and from what I can understand RPMFusion has two sets of repos,
main and -updates (there is also an updates testing repo, but I'm not
counting that since it's testing), and I see that the main repo
contains one major version of MythTV while the updates repo contains
the next major version. As I've not used Fedora in a long time, I'm
going to have to take what you said at face value "the same repos are
and have been used for all mythtv packages against all Fedora versions
since Fedora 4", meaning that you don't need to enable anything else
to get updates because both the main and updates repos are enabled by
default (or at least both enabled when you enable RPMFusion). While it
is surely up to the Richard to package MythTV for RPMFusion however he
wants, doing it this way does have the promlematic effect of upgrading
from one major MythTV version to another if it's not done carefully.

Now let me explain a bit about how the Ubuntu way works (it's all on
that page, but I'll try to condense it for you here). Ubuntu releases
with a specific version of MythTV (12.04 shipped with a build of 0.25,
14.04 shipped with a build of 0.27). In the main repositories (by main
here, I mean the ones that are enabled by default in Ubuntu), we will
not upgrade MythTV to a new major version (eg. 12.04 shipped with a
build of 0.25 in the main repos, we may add a newer build of 0.25, but
we will never add a new major MythTV version (eg. 0.26, 0.27) to the
main 12.04 repo). The Mythbuntu team provides extra repos that you can
enable. These repos are appropriately named after the MythTV release
they contain (eg. 0.25, 0.26, 0.27). In these repos, the Mythbuntu
team does daily builds from the github MythTV fixes branch of each
release. These builds the Mythbuntu team provides span multiple Ubuntu
releases. What this means is that if you are on 12.04, you can decide
to stay on 0.25 (remember, we won't put a major mythtv upgrade
somewhere to automatically upgrade you), or you can decide to upgrade
to 0.26, 0.27, or even 0.28 (we build master in a repo named after
what would logically be the next version of MythTV). Users seem to be
able to understand this just fine (probably because they read the page
with the graphic, or maybe because you can easily enable the other
repos in Mythbuntu Control Center) because I currently see that there
are over 2000* reported users on 12.04 (or a newer point release such
as 12.04.1) while about 1100* reported users are on a build of 0.25
(meaning that they are using the updated repos). I guess that wasn't
as condensed as I wanted it to be, but it's still a bit shorter than
the page. As I've said previously, the graphic does a good job of
explaining quite a bit.

I'm not sure why you think "Using ubuntu seems to be its own
punishment.", as you can see it seems that users being able to select
which MythTV branch they are on is working fine. The fact that Fedora
users can apparently get automatically upgraded to a new major MythTV
version unless they are careful when upgrading seems to be a problem,
but I'm sure an accidental major version upgrade would never happen as
all the Fedora users are super careful when updating. All 169** of
them.

* These numbers are counting total users of those MythTV versions,
including non-Ubuntu users and users building from source. I'm simply
extrapolating data
** This number is only counting reported MythTV users on Fedora, not
all Fedora users.

>
> --
>              R. Geoffrey Newbury
>            Barrister and Solicitor
>       Suite 106, 150 Lakeshore Road West
>          Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3R2
>
>        t905-271-9600 f905-271-1638
>               newbury at mandamus.org
>
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-- 
Thanks,

Thomas Mashos
Mythbuntu Developer
Should I add some stuff here to?
USA USA USA

Why would I give my phone number out on a mailing list, I'm not
looking for a good time
Ok now I'm just being petty, but I find it funny none of your other
mailing list emails had this much info in your signature