Announcing dmedia 0.4 "forplay"

I'm happy to announce the 4th release of the Distributed Media Library (aka "dmedia"). At this point dmedia is really just for developers and highly adventurous end-users, but the design and implementation are both progressing quickly.

You can download the source tarball here: dmedia-0.4.0.tar.gz

Packages are available for Ubuntu Natty in the Novacut Stable Releases PPA.

Unfortunately, as gir1.2-webkit-1.0 and python-couchdb 0.8 are now required, dmedia 0.4 can't be used on Lucid or Maverick. As such, this release in particular is only recommended for developers and super-extra highly adventurous end-users. Running the development version of Ubuntu has its own mild perils, not to mention the fact that dmedia has undergone some aggressive refactoring this cycle. Please be sure that all your files are safely backed up should you test-drive dmedia 0.4.

What's new in dmedia 0.4

The 0.3 cycle may have been a slow one, but 0.4 has been a nonstop whirlwind of development fury. Most of the work was deep in the backend, adding the features and robustness dmedia needs to pull off all its distributed magic. Err, that's half a lie... I'm lazy and make CouchDB provide most of the magic. There were also some big steps toward making dmedia a platform upon which fantastic user experiences can be built using familiar HTML5 technology.

Highlights include:

• dmedia.ui.CouchView now "for reals" can correctly sign all requests to desktopcouch, so go crazy with embedded WebKit + HTML5!
• dmedia.filestore.FileStore is robust, well documented, and basically feature complete
• Added dmedia.schema - good start on a formal, test-driven definition of the dmedia CouchDB schema
• The "dmedia/file" records now track where and how durably a file is stored
• Roughed out two new transfer backends - one for BitTorrent download, another for S3 upload and download

And a whole lot more - see bugs fixed in the dmedia 0.4 milestone.

Known issues

• Futon is currently broken on Natty - lp:716237
• dmedia has a failing unit-test on Natty - lp:710405
• The python-dmedia transitional Debian package has been dropped, so you should uninstall python-dmedia before installing the dmedia 0.4 package

Special thanks

And a special thanks to:

• Bilal Akhtar for getting dmedia 0.3 so nicely packaged that it's been accepted into the Debian NEW queue (wow!)
• rockstar for inviting us to talk about Novacut at NCLUG and for encouraging me to use dmedia code reviews as a way to get more people involved
• leighman for making sure dmedia will look nice in that other other standards compliant browser - Opera
• Akshat Jain for scouring the interweb and keeping us abreast of interesting industry developments
• David Green for fixing the broken appindicator icon in the nick of time
• Stuart Langridge as desktopcouch was his idea and it's totally brilliant... if your next desktop app doesn't use it, you're a fool!

Contribute to 0.5 and beyond!

We do monthly time-based releases, always releasing on the last Thursday of the month. That means we promise to make a release on time each month, but never promise what exact features will land.

dmedia 0.5 will be released on Thursday March 31 2011, and development is already underway. To see what's in store for the next release, checkout dmedia 0.5 milestone.

Interesting stats

ohloh says dmedia is 2 person years of work. Not too shabby for a little over 4 months of development.

That's all, folks!

Thanks to everyone who is helping make this dream a reality!

Cheers,

Jason Gerard DeRose