Hi All,

Being a huge fan of Amarok but using Windows as my desktop for practical reason, I'd like to help building a standalone version of Amarok for Windows (at least, if you want so).

While the KDE on Windows project is great for developers, I think it is not practical for a end-user to use, so a standalone package with only the needed part of kde (if any, ideal would be a Qt only dependancy) would be the way to go in terms of visibility.

Being the developer of Merkaartor (http://www.merkaartor.org), I've acquired a good knowledge of cross-platform development using Qt (but have zero experience on KDE development).

I understand there are some windows specific problem and am ready to help.

If someone would be kind enough to give me an insight of the state of Amarok on windows, direct me to the critical bugs and agree on what the desired goal are, It would be great.

Best Regards
- Chris -

Koying wrote:Hi All,

Being a huge fan of Amarok but using Windows as my desktop for practical reason, I'd like to help building a standalone version of Amarok for Windows (at least, if you want so).

While the KDE on Windows project is great for developers, I think it is not practical for a end-user to use, so a standalone package with only the needed part of kde (if any, ideal would be a Qt only dependancy) would be the way to go in terms of visibility.

Being the developer of Merkaartor (http://www.merkaartor.org), I've acquired a good knowledge of cross-platform development using Qt (but have zero experience on KDE development).

I understand there are some windows specific problem and am ready to help.

If someone would be kind enough to give me an insight of the state of Amarok on windows, direct me to the critical bugs and agree on what the desired goal are, It would be great.

There is perhaps a misunderstanding here: Amarok is already fully native on Windows.

I assume you are referring to the installer, which suggests that Amarok was part of some "KDE Linux Emulator" or somesuch. This is not the case.

What we could use however is an installer that's specifically designed for Amarok, with a nice and simple interface.

Amarok without KDE isn't going to happen.

So they could probably put you to work in #kde-windows on irc.freenode.net. Just get a KDE build environment all setup on your system and then...

What we need is someone building Amarok binaries (last I heard the one in the kde windows project is ancient, though they are maintaining emerge scripts) and then basically an Amarok branded version of the KDE Windows installer that just downloaded the needed requirements for Amarok and didn't have any confusing options about other KDE programs. The KDE Windows installer is plain Qt so your skill-set is what is needed.

It really has to be a version of the KDE Windows installer, so that if the user wants to install other KDE programs (or have some installed already) they could do so without installing the shared unix and KDE libraries twice. I know every application having its own copies of all the libraries it uses is the 'normal' way of doing things on Windows, but it doesn't mean we have to do that.

There are other issues with Amarok-on-Windows, but I think it would be useful to solve ease-of-install issue so maybe we could attract more developers wanting to fix it all.

markey wrote:There is perhaps a misunderstanding here: Amarok is already fully native on Windows.

I know it is supposed to be. However, I'm compiling from sources right now and it seems some commits are not checked against windows (or maybe with some specific setups).

So far, I had to make 3-4 ifdef's, and I'm at 35%... (e.g. strptime, fsync not existing on win32; taglib-extra needed, ...).

Anyway, I thought Amarok had a windows problem due to a post I read, but glad I'm wrong.

eean wrote:What we need is someone building Amarok binaries

Ok for that. However, as I said, I think the KDE Windows installer is too complicated for an Amarok only installer.

Do you have something against a standalone simple installer, installing behind-the-scene only the KDE stuff needed for Amarok to work?

Koying wrote:So far, I had to make 3-4 ifdef's, and I'm at 35%... (e.g. strptime, fsync not existing on win32; taglib-extra needed, ...).

The solution to taglib-extra being needed is to build taglib-extra.

As far as strptime, fsync, gosh really? Probably recent changes.

Have you checked to see what the kde windows team has? Maybe they already have the patches needed (I really don't know).

Koying wrote:Do you have something against a standalone simple installer, installing behind-the-scene only the KDE stuff needed for Amarok to work?

Thats exactly what I suggested should be done. Use the current installer, but hide all the details of whats going on (eg downloading and installing kdelibs and its unix deps).

If you mean a big ole' installer that's basically just a .zip file with a pretty face, that sounds far less maintainable then just making the kde windows installer more user friendly and amarok-oriented. Would mean whenever the user updates Amarok they would have to re-download and re-install all that stuff again, its an order of magnitude difference in download time.

eean wrote:The solution to taglib-extra being needed is to build taglib-extra.

Err... Yeah, I did that, from a "rogue" tarball. Do someone know if there is an official one, somewhere? Couldn't find it.

As far as strptime, fsync, gosh really? Probably recent changes.

My mistake. My build setup didn't pick up the KDE stubs/replacements made in KDE for MinGW.

Thats exactly what I suggested should be done. Use the current installer, but hide all the details of whats going on (eg downloading and installing kdelibs and its unix deps).

Make sense. I'll head in that direction.

- Chris -

Koying wrote:Err... Yeah, I did that, from a "rogue" tarball. Do someone know if there is an official one, somewhere? Couldn't find it.

Well it officially lives on jefferai.com, maybe that looks rogue but its the taglib-extra's maintainer's computer.

Koying wrote:Make sense. I'll head in that direction.

Great.

There is already a theme for a distinct amarok installer (http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdesupport/ ... es/amarok/), it probably needs some fixes though and someone who wants to maintain it (hint, hint ). It shouldn't need to much to get it working, the bigger work might be to fix the amarok/kde bugs on windows though. If you want some more information, just join #kde-windows on freenode or get in touch with me via kde-windows mailing list.

But lets not wait for all major bugs to be solved before we start releasing an Amarok installer and regular updates to the binary. It creates a chicken/egg problem of the windows port not receiving any interest in fixing the bugs because no one is even aware it exists since it doesn't have a release yet due to bugs...

there are already nightly packages available (look at http://mafia-server.net/amarok-nightly/README to find out how to install them).

eean wrote:

Koying wrote:So far, I had to make 3-4 ifdef's, and I'm at 35%... (e.g. strptime, fsync not existing on win32; taglib-extra needed, ...).

The solution to taglib-extra being needed is to build taglib-extra.

As far as strptime, fsync, gosh really? Probably recent changes.

The fsync() was my doing. I'll fix it today, sorry.

Fixed both the fsync() and the strptime() issues. Thanks for noting.

If you stumble upon any other compile issues, please let us know

After struggling a bit to get Amarok compiled, it's now done. At least, it starts, recognize the sound files and agrees to play them... well, kind of....

I now stumble on, as I understand reading various reports, the biggest issue: the phonon backends on Windows.

I've tried the VLC backend which works but which, IMHO, is not quite satisfactory (external dependency + dos box opening).
I've compiled the ds9 backend from source. The good news is that it is recognized and is not crashing (mostly), the bad is that it produces no sound, whatever type of file I feed it.

Looking further...

BTW, I'm using MinGW gcc 4.4.0 for building.

Koying wrote:After struggling a bit to get Amarok compiled, it's now done. At least, it starts, recognize the sound files and agrees to play them... well, kind of....

I now stumble on, as I understand reading various reports, the biggest issue: the phonon backends on Windows.

I've tried the VLC backend which works but which, IMHO, is not quite satisfactory (external dependency + dos box opening).
I've compiled the ds9 backend from source. The good news is that it is recognized and is not crashing (mostly), the bad is that it produces no sound, whatever type of file I feed it.

Looking further...

BTW, I'm using MinGW gcc 4.4.0 for building.

Phonon-vlc is still the best bet in my opinion. The ds9 backend is a pain to get codecs to work with and is barely on life-support as far as maintenance. Also we're thinking of switching to phonon-vlc for Linux as well, so it would be nice to have all platforms use the same thing.

Phonon-vlc isn't really finished yet but does have active development. I'm guessing the dos box is just for debug purposes... as far as dependency, whats one more really?

For back-ends phonon-mplayer seems like a good choice from my non-technical perspective. It's cross-platform (like VLC) and has GPU accelerated video playback (unlike VLC). Video playback is a minor part of Amarok, sure, but the backend selection affects the entire KDE system. Afaik you can't select a back-end on a per-app basis.