Hi Amarok can use different database backends (sqllite and mysql). This is properly handled in the ebuild. But there are manual steps necessary to get the mysql backend to work. If the user doesn't do these their song-database will not be successfully saved (and much frustration will be experienced). The steps are described at http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/MySQL_HowTo#MySQL_Setup
Feel free to submit a patch...
Really I can't pretend to know what the user wants, so he's on its own to follow the documentation. By the way, by default amaroK will continue use sqlite, and making it use another database requires following the guide.
I don't agree. I'm not asking you to know exactly what the user wants. I just want to be informed. It's true, sqllite is the default. But switching to mysql happens easily--in the wizard it asks, and there's a configuration item at runtime that the user can change at any time. When I do this, *I get no warning that something is wrong*. When I exit amarok and I didn't follow these extra instructions, suddenly my collection is strangely gone. I, the dumb user, assume that telling the wizard to do something will mean it happens, without any additional steps. The documentation that comes with amarok doesn't say "read the wiki". In fact, I don't even know the wiki exists, until I get on to IRC and find out about it. If portage just tells me, when it sees the mysql flag, that I ought to read the mysql howto, then I'll be a *much* happier user :) In a second I'll post a patch that does what I want.
Created attachment 87191 [details, diff] inform user of post-config for mysql
This is a problem that would make more sense for amaroK itself to solve. The error messages for mysql could be accompanied by a button that would switch the user to sqlite.
(In reply to comment #5) > This is a problem that would make more sense for amaroK itself to solve. The > error messages for mysql could be accompanied by a button that would switch the > user to sqlite. > Indeed, fixing amarok eventually is the right way to solve this. But at the moment, the error says, "Received Error from MySql: _blank line_>". So until amarok fixes this an other bugs, we dumb users are stuck! Portage manages the *install and configuration* of packages. You've got messages like this for dev-db/mysql and other packages; why not amarok too?
I would say, because amaroK is an user application rather than a system service like MySQL, and can't be configured on system level. BTW I should put also instructions for PostgreSQL if I put the ones for MySQL. I think Ian is correct and that has to be fixed in amaroK, rather than postinst'd in Gentoo. I try to avoid postinsts as they are more noise often. Reading the documentation is something needed anyway. (Also, Ian is one of amaroK developers, so you can say that it is his call :))
ok, if the consensus is, "it's an amarok problem" then I hope you dev's have time to follow through and post a bug on the amarok buglist. On their end, I see two bugs -- the wizard doesn't set up the database, nor is there a hint in the delivered documentation that something needs to be done -- the mysql error shouldn't be an empty string Thanks for your time! -VR
Can you please open a but for this on KDE's bugzilla at http://bugs.kde.org/ ? They would prefer if the users open the bug reports as indirection through distributions' maintainers might lose information along the way (and I agree with them, I never used MySQL support so I can't be sure to know what you want to say exactly).
