Music To Code To (was "Most In Need of Positivity" Award)

[Matt S Trout]

Andy Wardley wrote:
> Chris Benson wrote:
>  > I'm not sure what an "iTunes Server" does, but the SO & I are *very* 
> happy
> 
> The little knowledge I have was grokked from google. DAAP is the Digital
> Audio Access Protocol which iTunes and various other music players use
> for streaming music across a network.
> 
>   http://daap.sourceforge.net/
> 
> As I understand it, it is little more than HTTP with a few extra headers
> (DAAP-Server and DAAP-Client-Version) and some pre-defined URLs like
> /server-info, /databases, /login, etc.
> 
> So an "iTunes Server" is effectively a specialised web server with a
> a bit of Apple's Bonjour/Rendezvous protocol bolted on for network
> discovery (i.e. allows iTunes to see the server on the network).
> 
>  > with our SlimServer from http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html
> 
> Oooh!  Shiny!
> 
> SlimServer++ for being Open Source
> SlimServer++ for being written in Perl
> SlimServer++ for using CPAN Perl modules
> SlimServer++ for using TT generated web interface
> SlimServer-- for including *all* 19MB of the CPAN modules it uses
> 
> I can understand them bundling everything for people who want a
> one-click install and don't know (or care) anything about Perl.
> 
> But I would have thought it was safe to assume that someone downloading
> the Perl source would know how to use CPAN or could follow a simple
> 'install Bundle::SlimServer' instruction.

One of the reasons for this was that slimserver ships significantly patched 
versions of a number of modules, notably Class::DBI in order to change a 
couple of misbehaviours and rip out some of the worst inefficiencies. I 
believe the trunk codebase, which is running on DBIx::Class, uses a stock 
version thereof since DBIC is fast enough out of the box.

And SlimServer++ for appreciating the efforts of the open source people they 
depend on; Slim Devices sent us a very nice thankyou package for my helping 
out with the teething problems during the upgrade.