SoulseekQT Public Build 3

Submitted by Nir on Wed, 05/18/2011 - 00:16

No major new features in this one, as should be the case for most future public builds. As downloading appears to work pretty well my focus now is on getting the entire life-cycle of uploads to work. This means everything from properly returning downloadable search results to browsing to actual uploading. A bunch of bugs related to this were fixed, and a few unrelated ones as well:

  • Scanned MP3s are no longer rescanned every time the client is started.
  • Subfolders are now removed from 'downloading' folder when all contained downloads are complete.
  • Client now responds to 'download containing folder' requests from the original client.
  • Public and Userlist flags are now stored for shared folders between sessions.
  • Fixed incorrect processing of incomplete and excluded search tokens.
  • Returned search results now list whether the client is free to upload and how many files are in the upload queue.
  • Fixed attempting to start uploads to offline users. Also client now keeps track of upload users' online status.
  • Transfer speed is now shown during downloads.
  • Fixed occasional non-erasure of shared folder data after it is unshared.

Cheers, Nir

SoulseekQT Public Build 3

Tags: 
SoulseekQt

Comments

roomx's picture

Submitted by roomx on Sun, 05/22/2011 - 12:08.

I have only this build installed. (Vista Ultimate 64). Don't seem have have much functions working...

Submitted by Nir on Mon, 05/23/2011 - 00:14.

Well, this is clearly very early work in progress. Did you have anything specific in mind?

Submitted by serrebi on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 11:40.

I know this isn't a main concern but, the qt client isn't accessible with screne readers. I don't know how much you can do to fix that, but thought I'd at least let you know. I hope this doesn't replace the other client/s entirely. I've met so many cool people through slsk it'd be a shame for it to become inaccessible.

Submitted by Nir on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 15:19.

No, we don't plan on ever forcing people to switch to the new client. The idea is to keep improving it until most of our users are motivated to switch to it instead, but that's a long ways away, and even then we won't force people to switch. At most we'll start a secondary server to support backwards-incompatible features. Which screen(?) reader is SoulseekQT not compatible with? Maybe that's something I can look into in the long run.

Submitted by encefalocardia on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 14:51.

I already love the evident efforst to clean up and modernize the GUI. I only miss one option, the ability to see the queue for the song I want to get.

BTW, there's gonna be a new server for this?

BTW, and this is something I would be excited about:

I use soulseek via Wine. Since QT is cross platform, this means there will be a native Linux Client?!?!?!?!

Submitted by Nir on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 15:32.

Thanks! Place in line for downloads is something I'm looking into getting to work automatically very soon. i.e. get your place in line as soon as your download is queued and then periodically every once in a while.

re: new server - No, a lot of the work is on keeping things compatible with the old server/client. As I stated above, we might start a secondary server sometime in the distant future to work on more advanced, backwards-incompatible features.

re: linux version - Yes, as I've stated in the past, I plan on porting to Linux as soon as the Windows version becomes good enough to use on an ongoing basis. I tried porting to Mac and it wasn't too horrible. Porting to Linux should be even easier.

Submitted by encefalocardia on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 19:03.

Great news. According to a recent poll at Ubuntu's forums Soulseek is among the 15 most used appd via Wine.

Submitted by dclare on Thu, 05/26/2011 - 23:42.

Hi

I'm for the first time at QT info pages. And I don't get what is it for? I mean what's the reason to make new version?

When NS was released I understood that "ah ok, it's on new server, works better, faster, more search results blah blah.. overall progress and must-have update"

But here I don't see any info about what it is, why do I need this, what are the features?, are there any new features or are there any critical fixes or performance improvements? I don't even understand what QT means and stands for.

Or perfect reply for my post would be "hey relax man, it's just NEW version. NEW, got it? He just decided to make a new version"

Thank you for slsk. 've been using it for years. Sent donations several times and will do again, when cash be with me )

Thank you

Submitted by Nir on Fri, 05/27/2011 - 01:19.

That's a fair question. I've discussed to some length my intentions for the new client on the forum, but not on this news site. There are several reasons I'm working on the new client. In no particular order:

  • I want there to be an alternative for people who for some reason or another can't get the original client to work properly for them. I might not be able to solve every single issue every single person has with the original client, but two clients are better than one.
  • Qt is the framework I'm using to write the new client with. It's very powerful and very neat. It also works on Linux and Mac, which allows me to later on create ports for these platforms.
  • The codebase for the original client is a decade old mess. It's become very hard to keep developing it, add new features to it or fix existing problems. I've designed a data management framework for the new client that lets me come up with much simpler and more reliable ways to replicate the usual Soulseek client functionality, and it allows me to relatively easily develop more advanced features, such as can be seen with the already existing ability in the new client to share different folders to different user groups, or the way search results or file transfers are organized. There are also neat tweaks under the hood that would be very hard to pull off in the original client, like attempting both direct and indirect peer connections simultaneously, which often speeds things up immensely as long as your (Qt) client is the one initiating the peer connection, or another Qt client is. Once the basics are stabilized, I plan on more such more advanced features.
  • Something else I'm not thinking of!

Submitted by dclare on Fri, 05/27/2011 - 04:00.

Things that you mentioned are very clear and simply understandable for those who are close to software developing - scalability, improvements, updates, flexibility blah blah. But for ordinary users (like me) these are not such common things and are not like obvious :) That's why such questions appear.

Thank you for such a detailed response. I've got answers on all of my questions. I just think this should be somewhere on main page - like "Introduction" from author, explaining reasons for starting new version, circumstances that influenced such decision, goals, which author's planning to reach - just what you've written in last post.

Submitted by trackhed on Sun, 05/29/2011 - 18:05.

Awesome, Qt is a great framework, it has been years since I used SLSK, and just coming back to visit the site I see some exciting news like this. I'm sure the new codebase will allow you to upgrade and improve the system at an exponential rate. I congratulate you on all the great things you have achieved and commend you on your latest developments. :)

-colin

Submitted by Nir on Sun, 05/29/2011 - 18:51.

Thank you Colin! I have every hope the new Qt client will make for some interesting developments :)

Cheers, Nir

roomx's picture

Submitted by roomx on Sun, 06/12/2011 - 05:05.

/me is following every development of the QT-version as well. Cool stuff indeed.