MythTV port?

[Craig Treleaven]

At 8:36 AM +0800 3/23/12, James Linder wrote:
>On 22/03/2012, at 10:01 PM, macports-users-request at lists.macosforge.org wrote:
>
>> I've been running MythTV on Mac OS X for a number of years.
>> <http://www.mythtv.org/>  The core functionality is wonderful but the
>> build and install process on Mac is pretty darn painful!
>>
>> A capsule summary for those of you not familiar.  MythTV is a digital
>> video recording system with other components for DVD/BR videos,
>> internet video, music, slide shows, etc.  There is a master backend
>> that handles scheduling recordings and serving media to one or more
>> frontends.  The master backend stores all its information in a MySQL
>> database.  There can also be slave backends that provide additional
>> TV tuners and storage.  The simplest configuration is a single
>> machine running the master backend, MySQL database and frontend.
>> MythTV is Linux-first with ports to Mac OS, Windows and BSD.  Lots of
>> people run the backend on Linux with a mix of frontends.
>>
>> About 6 years ago, the backend was ported to Mac OS X when a couple
>> of tuning methods became available on OS X (firewire and Silicon
>> Dust's HDHomerun boxes).  Only the frontend had been available before
>> that.  A MythTV-developed Perl script continued to be used to build a
>> .app bundle--it was expanded to bundle the backend as well as the
>> frontend.  The problem is that the backend is not a double-clickable
>> Mac app.  The backend is a server process more akin to MySQL. MythTV
>> is just about to release version 0.25 with a ton of interesting new
>> features.
>>
>> Which leads me to MacPorts.  It occurs to me that using MacPorts to
>> build and install the backend might make the process a lot easier and
>> automate some of the tougher parts (installing a startupitem for the
>> backend).  The hard part is that Myth is a pretty extensive
>> application with a number of dependencies--Nokia's QT plus several
>> libraries, MySQL, and some Perl modules just for the core system.
>> I'm done some searching and I think MacPorts has existing ports for
>> all the dependencies except two Perl modules.
>>
>> So, am I crazy?  I'm not a developer but I've been building my own
>> MythTV system with the Perl script for some years.  I'd like to
>> contribute to a better all-Mac MythTV experience but I would
>> certainly need a bunch of help and support to get a functioning
>> MacPorts port file.  Anybody else interested?
>
>Greg I think that would be most marvellous but, and I've never *built* a port (as opposed to building a program with macports), mythtv is always changing so the port would need lots of ongoing maintainance.
>The existing mac implementations seem to fix at a level eg 0.24, 0.24-1 and not tracking 0.24-fixes. ie http://avenard.org/files/mac/
>
>Are you going to be the 'maintainer'? I'd definitely be a user
>

Hi Jimmy ;) -

I'm going to *attempt* to be a maintainer--I'm very worried that I'm biting off far more than I can chew.  It would certainly help to have someone else as a tester (hint, hint).  If we could get one of the Myth devs to support it, it might actually work.

My goal with this is really the backend.  I think using MacPorts could make it a lot easier to get a cleanly install that automatically runs in the background, fetches listings, etc, etc, compared to the current, largely manual, process.

If this works, I think eventually it would make sense to have a myth25 port that builds off a stable, tagged release and myth25-devel that builds off the current head of the 0.25-fixes branch. 

Craig