Anyone want to take ownership of any of my projects?

[Slugger]

Well, the time has come for me to start my exodus from SageTV. My goal is to slowly migrate to my next platform in time for the start of the fall 2015 tv season. Yeah, that seems like a long ways off, but I wanted to start by giving anyone interested a chance to take over any of my projects.

Effective immediately, I will not be producing anything new in the Sage plugin repository (not that I have delivered anything in quite some time, but this is the official "I'm done" message). All my projects are frozen and what's in the repo now is all I will ever release. Anyone who wants to take ownership of any of my projects can do so. Simply clone the repositories of interest and let me know. All we should need to do is contact Opus or Jeff or anyone from Sage/Google who will respond and have them change the ownership of the plugin in their repository to the new owner, which will give you the ability to release new versions to the repo.

Have a look at the git repos at http://sagetv-addons.sf.net for a list of what I currently own (and there are even some older svn repos at Google Code that I never even bothered to migrate a long time ago). Most are probably dead and will stay that way, but the ones that might pique the interest of people here are:

* sdepg: Alternative EPG source
* webui: The nielm webui plugin (most of it's not my code per se, but I do own the plugin in the Sage repo after nielm left; my git repo represents the current version in the Sage repo)

Honourable mention to:

* sre: Recording monitor
* sjq: Job queue
* SageAlert: Event notification

There are a bunch of others at the project site, but I doubt there's much interest; but have a look. Again, I'm done and will not release anything new again. So if you think you might want to take over then let me know.

Plugin support threads... my migration will be slow, I'll still be around, but I will be unsubscribing from most threads over the next month or two. I will post a message to plugin threads as I unsubscribe as kind of a final warning that I'm not going to be responsive. I'll still be around, I might see your posts, I might not. I might respond, I might not.

8 years... it's been a blast!

[graywolf]

Your knowledge, support and talent will be sorely missed.


What platform will you be going to?

[wayner]

Thanks for all of your work through the years Slugger, was folks like you that made SageTV the best platform. I am a hardcore user of SJQ, SRE, SageAlert and the Sage web UI and have been for years.

[Slugger]

Still working that out, it's down to 3:

My cable company now offers whole home Tivo; incredibly expensive though, but still a contender.

In the DIY realm, I'm either going to MythTV + Kodi or NextPVR + Kodi. I'd be returning to Myth hands down if only they supported my input devices (Colossus). I'm hoping that changes with the new Colossus 2 cards, but I'm not very hopeful. Given that, NextPVR + Kodi is the frontrunner at this point, but I'm still experimenting with both and probably won't make a final decision until late spring when I'll assess hardware needs, etc. and actually start building/buying/whatever replacements for the tvs.

[wayner]

Keep us posted with which way you go as it may help those of us that switch later on.

[tvmaster2]

Is there someone who thinks they can do this? Without it, Sage's lifespan has been drastically threatened, unless one of the old-guard chimes in with reassurance.
Anyone think they can do this, either free or for a fee?

[ranger]

Sorry to see you go and THANKS for all the support and plugins work. On the other hand, I started migrating last month to JRiver, so this just convinces me that the time for a complete break is finally approaching.

[KeithAbbott]

In the immortal words of John Winger, "You can't go! All the plants are gonna die!"

"And then depression set in."

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

In the immortal words of John Winger, "You can't go! All the plants are gonna die!"

+1

I still haven't found a system as elegant as Sage, which can play so many formats, locally and remotely, has such a dedicated user-base, and has such great media controllers. I have Tivo throughout the house, which are fine, but don't come close to Sage's flexibility

[matt91]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

+1

I still haven't found a system as elegant as Sage, which can play so many formats, locally and remotely, has such a dedicated user-base, and has such great media controllers. I have Tivo throughout the house, which are fine, but don't come close to Sage's flexibility

I admit not having looked at all the contenders in a few years, but it sure doesn't seem that there is anything out there that comes close to Sage.

It's really a shame that the software I first installed in 2005 is still better than what (I think) is available in 2015.

Matt

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by matt91

It's really a shame that the software I first installed in 2005 is still better than what (I think) is available in 2015.

What he said!

[tmiranda]

I'll miss you. Thanks for all the help over the years.

[tvmaster2]

Does this essentially mean that if the previous owners stop supplying EPG data then it's game over?

[wayner]

Yes, unless someone else steps forward.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Still working that out, it's down to 3:

My cable company now offers whole home Tivo; incredibly expensive though, but still a contender.

In the DIY realm, I'm either going to MythTV + Kodi or NextPVR + Kodi. I'd be returning to Myth hands down if only they supported my input devices (Colossus). I'm hoping that changes with the new Colossus 2 cards, but I'm not very hopeful. Given that, NextPVR + Kodi is the frontrunner at this point, but I'm still experimenting with both and probably won't make a final decision until late spring when I'll assess hardware needs, etc. and actually start building/buying/whatever replacements for the tvs.

Colossus is supported but very expensive - http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/wp-co...ssusDriver.pdf

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Colossus is supported but very expensive - http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/wp-co...ssusDriver.pdf

Yeah I found that awhile ago as well, but dismissed it as cost prohibitive. My hope would be a community supported driver, but my guess is the h/w on the new card is about the same, which probably means no dice on that.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

Yes, unless someone else steps forward.

that's not good. what kind of programming knowledge does one need to do this?

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

that's not good. what kind of programming knowledge does one need to do this?

Yes, and what can a non-programmer do to help?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

that's not good. what kind of programming knowledge does one need to do this?

I think we're talking about the sdepg plugin specifically here?

To maintain the current functionality only, someone would have to keep an eye on the status of the Schedules Direct JSON API service and when they announce that the current API is being shutdown and replaced with something new then you need to replace the current api jar with the new one, repackage, preferably test & validate the new package locally in your own environment, and finally release the new version of the plugins (yes, plural) to the repository.

This is the bare minimum and it assumes that I'm going to maintain the upstream JSON API client jar, which I currently plan on doing, but I can't promise that will last forever. For example, if I were to move to Tivo in the fall, I'd have no use for any piece of the SD JSON service and so I'd find it difficult to remain interested with the development. So if I'm not maintaining the JSON service api then someone also needs to fix/enhance/update that api library to keep inline with the SD service. Then you need to test that, release it, then go back to the sdepg plugin, pull in the updated api jar, test it in the Sage environment, then release all the changes to the repository.

Mind you, all of the above only keeps the current functionality of the sdepg plugin intact. Now if you're looking to enhance the functionality of the plugin, then on top of all of the above, you need to know groovy as that's what the plugin is written in.

This is why I'm giving away these projects now. If someone wants to take it over I'm willing to help them get their build environment setup so they can actually build and deliver it. I'd help someone thru making a full release to the Sage repository. But this person (or people) have to take the lead on it, show the initiative and then I'll be more than happy to help/answer questions along the way (i.e. "I tried to build with these commands, got error messages a, b & c. Thoughts?" I can work with that, but I won't have time to see a "ok I cloned the git repo, now what?"). But this offer stands only until my baseball season starts (i.e. late April). I usually stop work on my personal projects from May-Oct each year and this year is no different. The only difference is I will not be returning to Sage projects so once I stop coding this winter that's it for Sage. Sometime during the late spring/early summer I'll start repurposing my existing Sage dev disks/systems/etc. and when I start to wipe them, that's it, I won't have anything to use as a reference to get someone else up and running with this stuff.

I won't lie, there's a learning curve and it's definitely not easy to get all the pieces involved with this plugin into a new release, but like anything it gets easier with practice.

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Yes, and what can a non-programmer do to help?

To maintain the status quo, you don't really need to be able to write code -- assuming I'm going to maintain the upstrem Schedules Direct client API jar. You just need to be able to build, test, package, and upload new releases to the Sage repo as needed. Of course, this is only true until I decide I no longer need the SD JSON service, then you will need to code to keep up with changes to the SD service API.

It's the same thing really for all my plugins, but the sdepg one is a little more involved because there are two pieces to it, both of which I wrote. There's the sdepg plugin for Sage, which is the EPG data source replacement. But it depends on the Schedules Direct JSON service Java client, which is a completely separate project, but also something I wrote. The sdepg Sage plugin is useless without the SDJSON client library and so you need both, which makes it twice the work.

The rest of my plugins are basically standalone -- single projects, most of them written in plain Java unlike sdepg, which I wrote in groovy.

[emveepee]

Are you planning to keep livepvrdata.com running?

Martin