[mythtv-users] Mythweb versus Webfrontend

[Craig Treleaven]

> On Apr 1, 2020, at 5:23 PM, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 4/1/20, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven at cogeco.ca> wrote:
>> Unfortunately, neither Mythweb or Webfrontend is getting a lot of attention
>> these days.  Webfrontend was started more than 6 years ago.  Even at that
>> time, Mythweb had such serious technical issues that it warranted scrapping.
> 
> That seems a little extreme. While I know it's not actively maintained
> and I'm sure there are things in mythweb that don't work correctly, I
> can say for sure that everything I use it for has worked perfectly
> going in 14 years.
> 
I am not a developer but I’ve been packaging Myth for 6 years and used it for several years before that…

MythWeb has had only bandaid fixes for at least 7 or 8 years.  AIUI, the main problems were then and are still:

-there is no dedicated MythWeb developer anymore.
-MythWeb is written in PHP.  None of the currents devs are heavy PHP developers.
-MythWeb reimplements certain parts of MythTV and thus needs to be modified to keep in sync with ongoing development of MythTV.  See the previous two points.  In particular, MythWeb directly accesses the database.  The project _really_ wants to get away from that for another set of good reasons.
-MythWeb requires Apache (or another web server) running.  This is massive overkill, wastes resources, complicates the life of packagers, etc.  And potentially opens gaping security holes on the user’s system.

Webfrontend was supposed to be built on a modern platform and provide a superset of the functionality of MythWeb.  Unfortunately, after a promising start, it has been languishing for several years.

Personally, I don’t bother with MythWeb.  Or WebFrontend.  From a computer, I remote into the backend machine.  From my phone, I use Glorious MythTV...when I remember it.

I think a modern, standard-compliant, front end running in a web browser would be a really good thing for Myth.  In a world of phones and tablets, it seems pretty obvious.  Unfortunately, the MythTV project doesn’t seem to be able to attract a developer with the skills and time to make this happen.  Not sure why that is.

Craig