Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
230 lines (163 loc) · 9.97 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

230 lines (163 loc) · 9.97 KB
Raw

Party Music Player license

Copyright (C) 2011-2022 Kevin André

Party Music Player, abbreviated as PMP, is a multi-user client-server music system. The server is responsible for playing music, and a separate program, a 'remote', is used to connect to the server and instruct it what to do. PMP has an advanced file tracking mechanism; it can deal with moved/renamed and duplicate files without any problems.

PMP is designed to be portable software and should be compatible with most popular operating systems in use today. Only Windows has been tested recently. Linux has been tested in the past. Others like Mac OS X, BSD... have never been tested but should work as well.

This is alpha quality software. Existing features can still be incomplete. Certain 'essential' features that can be found in most music player software might (still) be missing. PMP might contain lots of bugs. Use at your own risk.

screenshot

Table of Contents

Contents of this file:

  1. Features
  2. Dependencies
  3. Running PMP
  4. Building on Linux
  5. Building on Windows
  6. Caveats / limitations
  7. Planned features
  8. More information

1. Features

  • Client-server
    • Server executable without graphical user-interface
    • Client executable to connect to and control the server
    • Multiple clients can be connected to the same server at the same time
  • Multi-user
    • Creation of user accounts on the server
    • Authentication with username and password when connecting to the server
    • Each user has their own playback history, track scores, and preferences
  • Advanced file tracking
    • Tracks are identified by file contents, ignoring irrelevant bits like metadata
    • Known tracks are still recognized after moving or renaming files
    • Duplicate files (created by a file copy operation) are recognized as being the same track
  • Queue-based
    • Tracks to be played are added to a queue
    • The top entry in the queue is the next track to be played
    • Breakpoints can be added to the queue, to stop playback when they are reached
  • Dynamic mode with track repetition avoidance
    • Dynamic mode adds random tracks to the queue
    • Tracks with a higher score are more likely to be selected
    • Avoids adding tracks that were played recently
  • Auto scoring based on playback history of each track
  • Distinction between personal and public mode
    • Public mode allows playing music for someone else without affecting your personal track scores

2. Dependencies

Common Dependencies

  • Qt 5 (at least 5.14)
    • modules: Core, Gui, Multimedia, Network, Sql, Test, Widgets, Xml
    • database driver for MySQL/MariaDB
  • TagLib 1.12 or higher

Build-time Dependencies

  • C++ compiler with support for C++ 2014
  • CMake 3.8 or higher

Building on Windows is done using vcpkg.

Runtime Dependencies

  • MySQL/MariaDB client library (libmysql/libmariadb)
  • Codecs

PMP currently uses MySQL for storing its data. MariaDB is probably a valid replacement, but this has not been tested yet. The MySQL server should be configured as a developer installation (it uses less memory that way) and should be set to use Unicode (UTF-8) by default. Default storage engine should be InnoDB.

Windows users will need to install the Xiph codecs or some other more generic codec pack if they need support for FLAC audio.

Linux users may need to install a GStreamer plugin to get support for MP3 files.

3. Running PMP

First make sure MySQL is installed and running.

Running the server for the first time

Run the server so it can generate an empty configuration file:

  1. Run the server executable (PMP-Server)
  2. Kill the server (use ctrl-C)
  3. Edit the server configuration file (see below)

Configuring the server

On Windows the configuration file can be found here:

  C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Party Music Player\Party Music Player - Server.ini

On a Unix platform the file should be in your home directory with a similar path and filename.

Open the file with a text editor of your choice. You will need to configure the connection to your MySQL database server. And you will probably need to configure the path(s) where your music is located.

An example configuration for Windows:

    [database]
    hostname=localhost
    username=root
    password=mysecretpassword
  
    [media]
    scan_directories=C:/Users/myname/Music, C:/Users/Public/Music

All other configuration parameters are optional and can be left alone.

Running PMP

After configuring the server you can run PMP for real:

  1. Make sure MySQL is running
  2. Make sure the PMP server is running (PMP-Server)
  3. Run the PMP desktop client (PMP-GUI-Remote)
  4. Log in; create a new user account first if necessary

4. Building On Linux

Building PMP on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems should be relatively simple:

  1. Make sure you have installed a C++ compiler and CMake
  2. Install development packages for MySQL, Qt 5 and TagLib using your package manager
  3. Download and unpack the PMP sourcecode
  4. Open a terminal, change current directory into the 'bin' directory of the PMP sourcecode
  5. Run the following commands:
    cmake ..
    make

These instructions might need some tweaks, as they haven't been tested (at least not recently).

5. Building On Windows

Make sure CMake and Git are installed.

These build instructions use vcpkg to build PMP's dependencies. A 64-bit build is necessary because libmysql does not support a 32-bit build. Install Visual Studio if you want to use the x64-windows triplet like in the build instructions listed here. It may be possible to use MinGW instead, but this has not been tested.

If you do not have vcpkg installed yet, open a CMD terminal and run the following commands:

> mkdir C:\src
> cd C:\src
> git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
> .\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

Then install the dependencies of PMP. Open a CMD terminal and run the following commands (these may take a long time):

> cd C:\src\vcpkg
> vcpkg install taglib --triplet x64-windows
> vcpkg install qt5-base[mysqlplugin] --triplet x64-windows
> vcpkg install qt5[essentials] --triplet x64-windows

Finally you can build PMP itself. Run the following commands in a CMD terminal. Adjust paths and VS version as needed; change Debug to Release (in both lines) if you prefer:

> cd PMP\bin
> "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake" -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -D "VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET:STRING=x64-windows" -D "CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE:FILEPATH=C:\src\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake" -D "CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug" ..
> "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake" --build . --config Debug

6. Caveats / Limitations

Since this project is in a very early stage of development, you can expect a few things to be missing or not working correctly ;)

  • Only MP3 and FLAC files supported for now
    → because file tracking is currently only implemented for those formats
  • Database requires MySQL (maybe MariaDB), SQLite is not an option
  • No automatic detection yet of new/modified/deleted files while the server is running, a full indexation must be started manually
  • Queue manipulation in the clients is still limited: only move/delete/insert of one entry at a time.
  • No custom filters for dynamic mode yet
  • Etc.

7. Planned Features / To-Do's

Only a list of ideas. No promises!

Effort is a rough estimate. Priorities can still change.

Feature Priority Effort
Artist-based track repetition avoidance High Medium
Scrobbling to Last.fm High Large
Server to server database synchronization High Large
Group song duplicates together and treat them as one High Large
Identify song duplicates which have different hash values High Large
Keyboard shortcuts for adjusting volume Medium Small
Fuzzy matching when searching the music collection Medium Medium
Server to server remote music access Medium Medium
Identify artist by something better than text Medium Large
Android app for controlling the server (only a remote) Medium Large
Time-based auto-stop function Low Medium
Support for other database providers than MySQL Low Medium
Support for other music formats than MP3 and FLAC Low Medium/Large
Manual playback to a second audio device (for headphones) Low Medium/Large
Silence detection at the start and end of each track Low Large
Crossfading Low Large
ReplayGain support Low Large(?)

8. More information

Rudimentary project website: https://hyperquantum.be/pmp/

GitHub repository: https://github.com/hyperquantum/PMP

You can contact the developer here: hyperquantum@gmail.com