MusicBrainz Blog

We ended up delaying this release by a day to make sure we could cram lots of work in before Oliver goes on holiday, so we’ve got quite a lot of things fixed last week!

Bugs

• [MBS-1463] – Show artist(s) on doing recording-recording edits
• [MBS-1507] – Search redirects to entity on partial matches
• [MBS-1637] – When looking up existing tracklist, use current release name/artist
• [MBS-2009] – Ticking the Vote box of the first edit causes "Vote on all edits" to match
• [MBS-2010] – Release editor: Add existing tracklist to release search shows duplicates
• [MBS-2028] – Entities highlighted with no open edits
• [MBS-2041] – Change track artists still not working as expected
• [MBS-2111] – Recording not found in add release "Recordings" phase
• [MBS-2143] – Adding disc by searching for existing tracklist fails to find some tracklists
• [MBS-2168] – Summary: (no changelog) when adding Catalog #
• [MBS-2265] – In VA releases, once the auto-track duration is triggered, unchecking ‘detect track durations’ doesn’t work.
• [MBS-2313] – Unnecessary edit annotation edit in the release editor
• [MBS-2360] – Release editor: found recordings list doesn’t close
• [MBS-2424] – Dropdown Box not updating Artist Name & Depressing Enter submits request
• [MBS-2511] – Release edit interprets numbers in track titles as times
• [MBS-2515] – Web service doesn’t return track artist credits in release query
• [MBS-2574] – No radio buttons for attaching CD TOC
• [MBS-2575] – Basic editor requires a space after track numbers
• [MBS-2576] – Some edits have links on Deleted Artist
• [MBS-2579] – Web service doesn’t return track lengths
• [MBS-2580] – Web service returns <length/> for recordings with no duration
• [MBS-2628] – "guess case" works incorrectly with work titles
• [MBS-2630] – XML web service v1 reports duplicate ISRC and PUID
• [MBS-2649] – Not receiving subscriptions emails
• [MBS-2728] – CDlookup proposes and allows you to attach a DiscID to a Vinyl
• [MBS-2738] – Internal Server Error trying to view release group editing history
• [MBS-2753] – Annotation causing an internal server error in the search results
• [MBS-2761] – Inline search always return artist results whatever type you chose
• [MBS-2763] – Cannot accept edit relationship edits if an end point no longer exists
• [MBS-2771] – Crash when relating recordings where relationships already exist
• [MBS-2784] – Fuzzy CD lookup doesn’t work
• [MBS-2804] – "Add release label" edit not showing again
• [MBS-2818] – No tracklist editor textbox displayed on test.musicbrainz.org

Improvement

• [MBS-390] – Edit search is incomplete
• [MBS-777] – Make cancelling take effect sooner
• [MBS-1717] – Allow selecting the release group of a release in the release editor
• [MBS-2137] – Make subscriptions emails ignore your own edits
• [MBS-2293] – Edit display improvement: Display ISRCs and lengths on recordings merge edits
• [MBS-2378] – Changing artists in the release editor (release and track) doesn’t _appear_ to do what users expect
• [MBS-2460] – Timeline graph should include MusicBrainz events
• [MBS-2621] – Guess case editor doesn’t remember options
• [MBS-2625] – Display "Artist in MusicBrainz" as well as the artist credit in edits
• [MBS-2643] – Merge legend and checkbox-selector in timeline graph
• [MBS-2752] – Copyable URLs for timeline graph need to account for geometry (i.e. zoom)
• [MBS-2757] – Fix Artist gender statistics
• [MBS-2769] – Release Country Statistics
• [MBS-2822] – ‘Add disc ID’ doesn’t link to CDTOC

Task

• [MBS-951] – MusicBrainz::Server::Data::Search::external_search is taking $c. It shouldn’t.
• [MBS-2762] – Clear artist credits from memcached

Sub-task

• [MBS-2451] – Display artist in release group search
• [MBS-2665] – Edits with at least one No vote
• [MBS-2671] – Filter by edit ID / time range
• [MBS-2675] – Filter by label

This version has a new parameter in DBDefs, so you will need to make sure your lib/DBDefs.pm has all the options in lib/DBDefs.pm.default. There are also 2 more dependencies – DateTime::Format::Natural and Data::Dumper::Concise. The tag for this release is currently v-2011-06-20-ngs-bug-fixes

We’ve just updated the servers with the latest round of bug fixes. After two years of no updates, its feels good to get them so often, doesn’t it? The next release is scheduled for June 13th. The bugs fixed in this release:

Bug

• [MBS-1851] – Can’t view "Edit artist" or "Edit label" edits: "An error occured while loading this edit"
• [MBS-1908] – Releases not being sorted by name
• [MBS-1919] – Guess case is missing for release titles.
• [MBS-1937] – Subscriptions email is not sorted
• [MBS-1994] – All tracks of candidate mediums are displayed twice while attaching a CDTOC
• [MBS-2055] – Add release/add disc: cannot add tracks or edit track lengths; leaving the tracklist tab loses tracklists; other problems
• [MBS-2067] – CDStub not displayed in the "Matching CDs" section on CDTOC lookup page
• [MBS-2114] – Recording appears twice in Recordings list
• [MBS-2122] – In artist credits "dialog" in advanced tracklist editor, the link beside "Preview" to artists is often incorrect
• [MBS-2123] – In "artist credits" dialog, if you manually click the magnifying glass for the search, impossible to close search dialog
• [MBS-2181] – Internal Server Error when submitting edit to remove and add disc
• [MBS-2205] – "Keep me logged in" does not keep me logged in
• [MBS-2261] – Release group is listed twice on an artist page
• [MBS-2356] – &quot; code in tracklists
• [MBS-2384] – Please restore migration scripts in admin/sql/updates
• [MBS-2398] – Internal server error when trying to load the editing history of a release group
• [MBS-2400] – ModBot deletes newly created artists that should appear in new artist credits once pending edits are applied
• [MBS-2402] – Fix FTP link in INSTALL
• [MBS-2470] – Can’t search for annotations with Unicode symbols in
• [MBS-2482] – External links and last updated overlap
• [MBS-2488] – Double escaping of & (&amp;) in tracklist
• [MBS-2490] – Internal server error when trying to change recordings on multiple discs
• [MBS-2516] – Changing existing IPI code/gender/country shouldn’t be an autoedit
• [MBS-2526] – Edit Label: Changing an IPI code is an autoedit and the code is not shown in the edit history
• [MBS-2563] – Internal Server Error on "relate to recordings" if you don’t select any recordings
• [MBS-2566] – Relating artist to recordings leads to an internal server error
• [MBS-2581] – "Rename artist credits" does not appear to be working when merging artists
• [MBS-2613] – Can’t edit (random "Internal Server Error")
• [MBS-2616] – Move disc ID edits fail if the target medium no longer exists
• [MBS-2619] – Change release group edits fail if the target release group no longer exists
• [MBS-2622] – Modbot doesn’t remove (all?) orphaned artists
• [MBS-2627] – Subscription mail hasn’t been sent for two days in a row

Improvement

• [MBS-1767] – "Edit medium" edit type doesn’t highlight what has changed between old and new values
• [MBS-1944] – URL page should display relationships
• [MBS-1970] – Set medium titles when merging releases
• [MBS-2117] – "Relate to…" should end up back at the original entity, not at the entity related to
• [MBS-2287] – Relationships type editing URLs should use GID rather than internal id, and GID should be displayed on AR tree
• [MBS-2443] – Timeline graph should show exact values on hover.
• [MBS-2444] – Data::Statistics needs a mapping of names (as in database) to labels to use for the timeline graph
• [MBS-2445] – Timeline graph needs better tick placement so data can be skimmed more effectively
• [MBS-2446] – Timeline graph needs better controls
• [MBS-2448] – Timeline graph should allow adding/removing lines
• [MBS-2472] – Fix display for two labels, one cat#
• [MBS-2508] – Add CD-R to the formats list
• [MBS-2512] – Add ISWCs to the basic metadata statistics
• [MBS-2554] – Remove the quotes around work / recording names
• [MBS-2568] – Statistics for artist type
• [MBS-2569] – Statistics for artist gender
• [MBS-2635] – Edit medium should show differences highlighted

Now that we’re slowly emerging from the critical bug fix phase in NGS, its time to make a plan of attack for how to address the most pressing issues that we need to clean up. The NGS user interface clearly requires a lot of work still; no one will argue that. The user interface was the hardest part about NGS — when we first started we had no idea how to make these things work. But, we got them to work and the team deserves a round of applause for that!

Now it time to get organized for future releases and we could use a bit of your help here. We’ve been doing daily hot fix releases and are now doing weekly releases. Once we’re done fixing critical issues we’re going to slow the schedule down to roughly monthly releases. In the future our releases will be a mix of bug fixes, UI improvements and new features. Nothing in NGS is in a state where “we have to live with it for a long time”.

If you don’t like some aspects of the NGS user interface, please head over to this UI ticket report in our bug tracker and see if we’ve already have a ticket for your pet issue. If we do have a ticket for your favorite issue, please vote on it to express your interest in having this ticket fixed.

We’re going to start working on the tickets that receive the most number of votes and work our way down. We’re going to engage our UX designer for more help to clean up the NGS user interface and to address all of these pesky problems that are plaguing our users.

But, please cut our developers some slack. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, vote on the tickets and sit tight. We know there are lots of issues and we’ve already fixed a pile of them, but we’re not going to forget about the other issues. Just please give us constructive feedback and some time.

Thanks!

Another day, another bunch of bug fixes! I do wonder sometimes, “how could we have got so much, so wrong?” but we’re making some really good progress. Here’s what you should find fixed now:

Bug

• [MBS-1169] – Musicbrainz NGS Server is missing a hell of a lot of HTML sanitization. (HTML/script injections galore…)
• [MBS-1814] – Add release from disc ID adds disc ID to every disc
• [MBS-1956] – Adding translated tracklistings is impossible
• [MBS-1965] – You have no collections!
• [MBS-1993] – External links not appearing on label page
• [MBS-2023] – CD Baby not showing up in external links
• [MBS-2027] – Amazon cover art does not display for URL added post NGS
• [MBS-2068] – Specify that "found ### edits" in edit listing is an estimation
• [MBS-2119] – Punctuation not shown when editing medium
• [MBS-2209] – Tracklist preview shows empty "disc 0"
• [MBS-2210] – Collapsed discs cause Add Disc page to appear off top of page
• [MBS-2277] – Basic editor more likely to lose or misapply associations between tracklists and recordings than advanced editor
• [MBS-2281] – [ws/1] release-group request change in behavior
• [MBS-2300] – An "edit medium" edit got stuck and can’t be approved
• [MBS-2304] – Clicking on "Artist as credited on this track" deletes the text
• [MBS-2308] – Displaying {additional:addionally} and so on next to relationships in all relationship pages.
• [MBS-2309] – Invalid WS request causes crash
• [MBS-2311] – Release editor: "An artist is required on track n" when seeding parameters to release editor
• [MBS-2316] – Broken link in "edits for your subscription" email
• [MBS-2319] – Cannot merge multiple recordings that have a common ISRC

Improvement

• [MBS-1978] – "External Links" display in the sidebar doesn’t work as intended

The Git tag for this version is v-2011-05-26-ngs-hotfixes.

Thanks for sticking with us through that brief bit of downtime for editors – here’s what we got fixed today! Of interest especially is the improved support for relationship edits in artist history. Hopefully tomorrow we will clean up the subscription system a bit more, so you can get back to voting! This version is v-2011-05-25-ngs-hotfixes in Git.

Bug

• [MBS-1945] – Relationships edits dont appear in artist history
• [MBS-1990] – Can’t import/add certain freedb/discid releases: "An artist is required on track x" for all tracks
• [MBS-2057] – [ws/1] track request is missing tracknumbers in release-list after ngs migration
• [MBS-2102] – Adding a new release/tracklist that shares recordings changes existing release tracklist
• [MBS-2129] – Edits submitted when no changes made
• [MBS-2130] – Edit medium (to correct separate bug) didn’t remove intended tracks
• [MBS-2135] – Send subscriptions emails at the normal time
• [MBS-2140] – Recordings automatically changed when editing release with CD+DVD with same track names
• [MBS-2141] – Search indices not updating every 6 hours?
• [MBS-2177] – All recordings are forgotten if you go back to Tracklist from Recordings
• [MBS-2198] – Using Artist Credit with no join phrase results in a server error
• [MBS-2219] – Internal Server error trying to edit artist credit and track title in advanced error for mashup
• [MBS-2263] – Link in a URL’s title is incorrect
• [MBS-2270] – Internal Server Error for invalid timezone
• [MBS-2271] – broken link on ‘Edit Relationship’ page
• [MBS-2272] – Cannot display some edit relationship edits
• [MBS-2285] – Internal Server Error adding/removing anything from collection

Improvement

• [MBS-1706] – Indicate date is Y/M/D in the RE
• [MBS-1946] – Readd old relationships phrases in database in addition to new short ones

We have a number of data changing update scripts to run for today’s hot fix release. To be on the safe side we’re going to put the site into read-only mode for a few minutes while those scripts run. Please be patient with us, while we roll out this hot fix release.

We expect to get started on this release right now.

We’re getting a number of reports from Rhythmbox, Sound Juicer and other applications that their CD lookup is no longer working. We currently have no open bugs that tell us what is wrong, so we can’t fix anything.

We believe that we are outputting correct XML for CD lookups, thus there isn’t anything for us to fix. We are, however, outputting more matches for CDs, since multiple releases for a single CD can be returned. But, this is nothing new — clients should’ve supported this even before NGS.

We need the authors of programs that are broken to tell us what broke their stuff. Then we can determine if we need to fix something, the authors need to fix something or if we can come up with some sort of compromise. We’ve been talking about NGS for two years and these application authors never bothered to test their applications with our new stuff.

End users who are upset at CD Lookups failing: Please go complain to your software authors to resolve these issues or file bug reports with us if the trouble is in MusicBrainz.

NOTE: These applications are not failing because of User-Agent blocking — we haven’t actually started doing that.

As promised, here are some release notes for today’s monumental NGS release.

We’ll post more information on the release, including how to setup slave servers, tomorrow after we’ve had some more sleep.

We’ve made it! NGS is live! Thanks to everyone who worked on this massive project!

Release notes and instructions for updating mirror servers will be coming soon.

We’ve fixed enough bugs, done enough testing and we’re finally happy that we can switch over to NGS:

We’re going live at 18:30 BST! (17:30UTC, 19:30 CEST, 10:30PDT)