Still a working project

[hairyhippy]

Hi Dan

Not really an issue but I am wondering if you are still working on this project? You have done a fantastic job over the years and it would be a shame to see EMM die. Yes it's still usable but it definitely has a few flaws/bugs.

Be great to hear from you.

[dyster]

I was wondering the same, I can't see any responses from Dan here or on kodi forum since mid 2023 so I thought he is probably on a very long hiatus, and I decided to try and tackle the code myself.
It looks like he was in the middle of quite a big rewrite (addon interface and database schema are the two big ones I can see), so I understand if he is reluctant to pick it up again.
I started it a few weeks ago to see how much work it would actually take, and I've gotten as far as getting it to build and start again, and scraping local movie info. I don't know how long it will take to get it back in full working order, or at least in a testable state, but I keep plugging away at it haha. You can follow it here
https://github.com/dyster/Ember-MM-Newscraper

[hairyhippy]

Brilliant! Thanks dyster. Perhaps if Dan reappears you can work together on it?

[DanCooper]

Hello everyone!

Yes, I'm still here, but I haven't really worked on it in the last year. On the one hand because Ember still works without any major problems, at least for me (but I'm also working with an unpublished build that was created before the major changes to the code), and on the other hand because I was completely overloaded with work and no longer had the capacity to work on Ember for hours every evening and weekend. For this reason, I also withdrew from the forum. At the end of last year, I gave up various positions in my job because I couldn't go on like this. Since then, I've been doing very well again.

At the moment, I'm setting up my new private workstation (and hate Windows 11 after just a few days), a new server and a VM host. I'll probably be busy with this for another 3 weeks until everything is running smoothly again and I can continue with Ember.

I'm still really keen to work on Ember and finally finish the changes I've started. As dyster has already seen, there are simply a lot of changes that need to be cleaned up after 15 years of development and ever new additional features. There is soooo much duplicate code for almost the same task and I have to reduce it.

The last commit here on GitHub was more or less just a backup of my workstation so that I wouldn't lose everything in the event of a hardware defect. The code is therefore not really executable or anything really finished.

As I have said many times in the forum, I no longer make any promises about when or how something will be released.

Best regards and thanks for the support!

[hairyhippy]

Hi Dan
It's really good to hear from you, especially with a very full explanation.
Also fully appreciate your stance on making promises.
Hopefully dyster can lend you a hand if you should require any help. I would love to offer but will admit, I'm very much an end user.
Best of luck with your future endeavours with EMM and everything else.

[Cocotus]

@DanCooper Greetings from Germany :) To motivate, Im still using Ember as of today, forked it to make it compatible out of the box with latest Visual Studio and it compiles just fine (to repair Moviepilot scraper lol, never ending story even back then ^^^). The app still works and thats the most important thing :) Thanks for holding the flag Dan (Gruß in die Schweiz!)

[dyster]

Brilliant! Thanks dyster. Perhaps if Dan reappears you can work together on it?

I was going to say well he might come back and not like anything I've done 😁

[dyster]

@DanCooper I don't know if you even want any help with it but I saw that you had some collaborators on here before.
I did some changes to the addons to get them working again, i rewrote a few to the new addon interface, and then disabled the rest for now. All of these changes can be thrown in the bin really, don't really do anything.

I upgraded everything to .NET 8, it has caused some glitches with windows forms but went mostly very smoothly (I figured this update must happen at some point, or will be stuck with old nugets forever)

I realised the database was undergoing a lot of changes, but there was no schema for the new one. There was a patch to v48 though so after some fiddling I got it working, and then have been taking it from there with some guesses as to what the intent was.
(all of these changes look like improvements to me though btw, the addon interface and the db changes)

Then after I saw how much of the inline SQL queries were out of whack, I took the maybe controversial decision to start converting the project to EF core, I know it's not everyones cup of tea but I think the benefits of it outweigh the downsides.
Besides reducing a lot of boilerplate code that queries the db and assigns it to objects, I started getting rid of some of the MediaContainer classes and replacing them with the EF model classes directly.

Going forward I also noticed quite a lot of code duplication like you say so I was going to convert addons to have abstract base classes to share some code, rather than using interfaces and rewriting the same stuff.
If you don't want any help that's fine I won't be upset haha, but if you do want it or if there is anything specific I could be doing while you are getting stuff back together please do tell.
(If you think EF core conversion is worthwile for example)

[Sunsurfer89]

Moin from Nothern Germany,

Since my oldest daugther has reached the right age to watch some TV Shows (like Heidi, Wickie, etc.) I decided to rip all the DVDs to my NAS and what could be better to organize all the data to make it Kodi compatible? Right: Ember Media Manager. 😀

I'd like to express my big thanks to @DanCooper for all the work. Up to now, all is running very well and I'm happy. (EMM 1.11.1 on Win 10)

However, I found this thread and it was very interesting to read the comments and critics. So, I had two questions in mind:

1. Why is EMM written in VB and not C#?
   I mean, I started with VB years ago, too, but finally switched to C# thanks to short syntax and better app performance.
2. What about using WPF?
   All my Apps that I write at work (or at home) are defined as WPF app. They look nice and modern, the XAML syntax is easy to read and when using MVVM technology, the real power of XAML in WPF becomes obvious.

I'm really looking forward to some comments/answers.

Cheers!

[Cocotus]

@Sunsurfer89, well over 10 years ago, I believe it was Dan who picked up that abandoned project on GitHub, so it's not like he had a choice in choosing the framework. I joined him back in the day because I was also working with VB.NET and WPF at my job, so it was easy to contribute. We both learned so much! :) The program quickly became stable, and features were added like TraktTV support, tag support, a new scraper, and Kodi API support. Good times, and great feedback from the Kodi community.

Now, around 10 years later, I still use this tool from time to time when I add a new movie. But as you mentioned, today the whole framework of Windows Forms and VB.NET is outdated. If you stay within the Microsoft ecosystem, C# and WPF would be my choice, especially with the advancements in .NET Core and multi-platform support. Recently, I got into the Flutter framework from Google at work (building mobile apps), which allows you to write code once and publish it as a web app, iOS app, Windows app, or Android app, with minimal effort. Interesting times to be a developer I must say. But Ember will always have a special place in my heart being the first real community project I contributed 👍

[Sunsurfer89]

Many thanks @Cocotus for your explanation. I see and can understand. Maybe now, EMM became too big to lift it onto a new technology like WPF, right? So the transformation effort might be too big, or what do you think? While browsing through the code, it could be some work but also a chance to clean it up...

I also like the idea of using a completely other ecosystem. However: Google and I is like ice and fire - we won't be friends in this life 🤪 (it's just because I HAVE TO work with Google at work and well... nope! I know Microsoft isn't perfect but Google?!) ... as said: no friends. 😉

Anyway, I leave the main decision to you @DanCooper @Cocotus to define the main strategy. Whatever you decide, the community seems to open to contribute and help.

[schrubba]

Hello,
the EMM is still the best! But the imdb scraping (with patch) is broken.
It would make me very happy if you could repair the module...