EDIT: Changed the title to something more constructive so it may help others.

As the title says, I've had enough and ditched amarok in favour of clementine.
That is also far from perfect, but I am trying to explain my reasons.

Recent update of mysql (to version 5.1x) forced me to give up the embedded db and configure mysql. If I had not managed my rated songs in playlists, amarok would have "forgotten" all my rated tracks. So it did countless times before.
Ok, that worked more or less good and it was a lot of work to switch my playlists to xspf (or whatever it's called).
But here comes the problem: Amarok stores lot of absolutely unneccessary extra-stuff in it's playlists. I had a situation where my music mount point was not available, but amarok was running.
Guess what happened, when I closed amarok, mounted my music and opened amarok again?
Right, the database was empty and not enough, the playlists stopped working to. Amarok displayed them as empty, even if the were not. *EVERY* other player opened them Even drag and drop them manually did not work.
That is so unacceptable. Man, I want my music player to play my playlists. That is more important than anything else. It makes me really sad and angry that developers don't seem to give a dam. grr. Sorry if I am ranting, but I used to be a fanboy, I even had a T-Shirt
So, maybe someone has some answers/ideas for me, what I could do right now.
Maybe it would help to let the user choose in which format the playlists are saved by default. I recognized that the amarok generated playlists are 4 times bigger than when I export them to m3u. But the exported work.
Also I think there really should be a truly embedded db support again.
Well, that's enough for now,
M.

Hm, you didn't even tell which Amarok version you last tried...

Also, assuming that the developers don't give a damn is a bit harsh, they do what they can, but since they also have to live of something , they all have day jobs and only little time available for Free Software. Remember, you didn't pay for this software and the developer all put their volunteer work at your service in their spare time, so thinking a bit about that before ranting blindly and accusing people would be an idea, no?

Hi Mamarok!
You're right about the ranting. I just had to release some pressure.
It is just *pure horror* to see years of work (I've put in rating tracks and coddling my playlists) being destroyed within seconds and for (from a users point of view) stupid reasons. Which version I've tried? I tried all of them, right now 2.3.1.
I think much damage has been done with the 2.x series. For me 2.2 was the first usable release. IMHO too much attention has been given in adding more or less useful features, when it should have gone in keeping the setup consistent. Sure that might be boring but it keeps the user base happy. Just my 2 cent, but as a long time user it hurts

The Dynamic Collection feature is currently broken in 2.3.1, but the developers are working hard on solving that problem for 2.3.2. It did work well for me since 2.2.0, but failed since 2.3.1, so this is clearly a regression, you can subscribe to this report to be updated on the progression: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171213

If it were easy to solve it would be since quite some time, believe me.

As for the versions: we didn't targeted the versions prior to 2.2.0 to end users, and our release notes on http://amarok.kde.org clearly state what is not working, so reading release texts is sometimes a good idea...

You took a big risk trying to convert your database. No regular user should ever do that, and certainly not someone not willing to accept the very big risk of loosing the database.

The playlists not working can be explained by a messed up database.
And the reason we use XSPF by default (only to store the session though, you have a choice when exporting) is because it's XML based and can hold extra data useful during amarok startup.

All is not necessary lost though, it Could be you actually still have the embedded database. Check in ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle

Nono, don't get me wrong. I did not change the db *recently*. That happened a while ago when mysql-5.1 went stable.
I then took the work and exported evey single playlist to m3u and to reconvert & rate everything again.
Yesterday I just started amarok while my musik-hd was absent and it the collection/playlists are empty after a rescan (for the playlist I guess it's because the rescan gave the files new sqlid's...).

Ahh, and I am talking about "saved playlists"! and not all the funstuff, dynamic lists, etc.

Martux wrote:Ahh, and I am talking about "saved playlists"!

By default those are even saved in the database, there is no file copy. Depends if you clicked the save button directly or long-clicked.

Martux wrote:Yesterday I just started amarok while my musik-hd was absent

How do you expect a playlist to be populated if the files don't exist?
Well, I can make sure the playlist is still populated, but the tracks will be unplayable. I'm sure that is better then nothing at all, but it won't magically make the files come back.

Is your musik-hd on USB?

I saved the playlists to disk to be not dependant of mysql.
Songs are on a local hd, which was temporarely unavailable but amarok was active due to system startup (and rescanned the empty collection I guess). Sure the songs were not there. Issue is, the playlist and collection function were defunct *after* I made the disk available again
I even stopped mysql and poulated /var/lib/mysql with a backup from the previous day. All to no avail
All the extra info amarok stores within it's playlists may be nice for devs but if there is *anything* with the collection/mysql, amarok won't load the tracks anymore...

Hi Martux,

It's hard, from your posts above, to follow exactly what you've been doing with your disks and your database, but since you have a backup of your data I'd be very surprised if we couldn't make this work.

I think I used to see you around on #amarok -- any chance you can poke me in there?

Hey, thanks for the offer. But I don't have a irc client installed (so it must be someone else you saw there) and have not much time at my hands right now. It's always a bit complicated to tell complex technical problems in another language
I hope it's clear now what I was trying to say?
I am sure I could "fix" this with some ivestement of time, but it cannot be the solution, to do this every now and then (at least 3 times a year). So right now I am desperate enough to give clementine a chance with my imported playlists. Gnaa, on the other hand it lacks a lot of nice features amarok has
Btw. why is there no more embedded db with mysql-5.1? I think apps based on other apps should follow their upgrade path?!

I'm not sure why you think that embedded databases are no longer supported. My setup:

~$ mysql --version
mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.41, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.1

My db is embedded, and always has been. I wouldn't have a clue how to mess with an independent db, and hope never have to.

I *do* feel that we need a better, easier way to backup statistics. I've lost them a few times, to my regret.

Valorie

Well, that's interesting. I am on gentoo here. When I try to emerge amarok with the -embedded USE flag, it will force me to install mysql-5.0.x.
So that is not a hard dependency of amarok?
Regarding the backup strategy... yes, that would be nice. I don't even care about statistics, but keeping the saved playlists consistent is neccessary.
I mean why is it, when the collection gets rescanned the saved playlists *can* be empty? I guess it is because this tag in the xspf file:
<identifier>amarok-sqltrackuid://</identifier>
This line gets ignored by eg. clementine so that can load the playlist. Amarok doesn't. That is clearly a showstopper...
Also an idea: Can't the rating of a song be stored in the id3-tag, in the comment field for example?

Martux,

It's up to you. I'm willing to invest the time to try to help you recover things if you want to try it. But, not on this forum -- IRC, IM, or even email would be better.

As for statistics, I've been working on that problem for quite a while now. The most permanent way to store statistics is with the file itself. However, while most tag formats have a way to store statistics, most of them are very bad. I'm finally very close to version 1.0 of the FMPS specs being released, which defines sane ways to store statistics in tags, which are also consistent across tag formats. See http://gitorious.org/xdg-specs/xdg-spec ... cation.txt for a preview.

I know it sucks when problems like these crop up, but I and others have been spending a lot of time figuring out ways to make them better, with things like the FMPS spec (which Banshee, VLC, Ampache, and Quod Libet, among others, have committed to supporting). This at the same time as trying to keep Amarok going and fixing bugs and porting 1.4 features and all.

I'm really sorry you're this frustrated that you're thinking of ditching after so long, but I do want to assure you that these problems really are being thought about and solutions really are being worked on.

jefferai, thank you for the kind words. I learned that Opera has a built in irc-client. Can you give me a room-address, we could meet there then.
In the meantime I build amarok again, this time with embedded flag set and mysql-5.0.90. Thanks, Marcus