There, SoC is over! Not much updates here along the way, but I managed to reach all my objectives, which means collections are now operational in XMMS2! More thorough testing will happen when clients start using the new API, and I will of course keep working on the project to fix things, finish the last details and help make it into the release after the next. But most of the work is over, which means it is now possible to create dynamic collections, use party shuffle playlists, query the medialib without writing SQL queries, etc. I posted a mini-HOWTO to show how to work with collections using the standard XMMS2 cli. More details can be found on the concept and the design pages of the wiki.

According to one friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed (you know who you are), I don't post on this blog enough. So strap yourselves in boys and girls, because here comes a new post.

The DAAP transform is in place and mostly finished! Barring a few kinks, it's ready to use, and it works much better than I had initially expected it to. Yes, the syntax is a bit stubborn; yes, iTunes struggles with it on occasion, but that'll all be worked out as time goes on. I think it's best at this point to move on to another phase of the project -- adding Bonjour/Rendezvous/Zeroconf/Whateverothernamesexistforthisprotocol support!

Also, if any of you have access to a Mac, I _highly_ recommend checking out XCode's MallocDebug (thanks to Tobias for pointing it out to me). While running the program, a little gnome** jumps into your code, roots around for a bit, then screams "HEY! That leak you're looking for? It's right *here*." This program is like magic, it practically points directly at any memory leaks it finds. I patched about 5-6 leaks almost instantly. Plus, it was a big help in fixing an ugly 300KB leak (yeah, there really is that much data to sift through, and my music collection isn't even that big). If you have access to it, use it. You'll thank me later. ;)

**I may or may not have made this part up.

There we go, starting work on the Collections project of the XMMS2 music player! I'm delighted to be able to work on a project which I have long been interested in!

In short, collections are an abstract representation of subsets of the media library, which can be used to search/query music based on filters, save groups of songs, generate playlists (either static or dynamic, à la iTunes' Party Shuffle), etc. Collections will therefore make the access to the media library both simpler and more powerful, by unifying concepts (queries, playlists, views) and allowing new features.

Hello everyone, my name is Cole Thompson, otherwise known as coledot, and I will be writing a DAAP implementation for XMMS2 for Summer of Code. I am very excited to be doing this, and hope to be of use to XMMS2, as well as learn a few things along the way. More updates to come as the project progresses!

I posted a first version of the Collections Design wikipage, for now mainly focusing on the collection API and the development roadmap. Things are getting clearer and more concrete, thanks to brainstorming and Anders' ever lucid advice.

The implementation phase is now starting in parallel, with a merge of some refactoring of the current API as a warm-up (had been sleeping in my git tree for way too long).

School has kept me busy lately, but I finally managed to complete the Collections Concept specification page. Things are much clearer now, and I shall start working on the implementation design right away!

Feedback is still welcome about the page above of course.