Difference between revisions of "Talk:Australian TV Listings"

Revision as of 02:38, 15 November 2013

Can these Icons be automatically downloaded using the 0.21 download channel icons?

Shepherd Warning!

Hello! I'm a Shepherd dev and noticed that user GBee added this to the "Shepherd" section of "Australian TV Listings":

Warning.png Warning: Please note that Shepherd is completely unsupported by the MythTV project. It is not an XMLTV compliant grabber and operates directly on your database. It does not allow MythTV to schedule listings updates like supported grabbers. This will only change if you lobby the developers to change their stance.

I don't really understand this, since:

• All of the grabbers on this page are "completely unsupported by the MythTV project," but don't have this warning on them.
• Shepherd is fully XMLTV compliant and has been for a long time.
• During setup, Shepherd offers the ability to integrate itself with MythTV via the --configure-mythtv option, but during normal operation does not modify MythTV's database.
• Shepherd does allow MythTV to schedule listings if the user wants. We don't recommend that by default, but it is certainly possible, just like any other grabber.
• "Lobby the developers"... to do what? And if you want us to change something, why not post a request to our mailing list? It sounds like we are refusing to do something when in fact we have never been asked.

Aside from being factually incorrect, I feel the warning implies there's some danger to users from using Shepherd, like loss of data or a corrupted database or something.

It is perplexing that this page lists grabbers that flat out don't work, while warning users away from Shepherd.

-- Max Barry, user mbarry 15 Nov 2013.

Update: I notice the same warning about Shepherd was also added to XMLTV.

Shepherd follows the XMLTV data format, but does not follow the XMLTV behavioral format. XMLTV grabbers are intended to be a slave to the client application, called when the client application wants data, and outputting the data to stdout for the client to receive. Shepherd functions backwards, installing itself in cron, running when it wants to, and force feeding the data into the client application. wagnerrp 00:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

If there are grabbers listed on this page that do not work, identify them as such. wagnerrp 00:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

If you think Shepherd shouldn't be invoked by a cron job, okay, but how does that make it non-compliant with XMLTV? XMLTV is a document format.

That aside, Shepherd *does* run as a slave to MythTV, being called whenever MythTV likes, if the user says "no" when asked, during setup, if they want the cron job. What you're referring to is part of an extended and optional configuration routine that we added because MythTV's default scheduler isn't very friendly to Australian conditions. It's simply wrong to tell users their only option is to "lobby the developers" when in fact they can easily decline the part in question during setup. Mbarry