Beta Release delayed

[Corionis]

Had been hoping to release the Beta soon. However during regression testing two problems have proven to be serious enough to warrant reworking certain aspects of Hint processing.

• Hints must be created on a single publisher #117 for problem details.
• Version 4.0 Release Milestones for "the plan".

[Corionis]

In the process of redesigning, rewriting and simplifying the Hint mechanism.

The scenario:

• Family has a streaming media server, e.g. Plex
• Members share portions of the Plex back-up load
• Dad manages the Plex server
• Mom has family photos she manages
• Son has additional content, photos, gaming videos he manages

Goals:

• To back-up all or portions of the Plex collection to members
• To allow each member to make local changes (rename, move, delete)
• For those local changes to be propagated to the other systems at back-up time
• For multiple actions on the same item to be processed in-order
• To avoid false duplicates
• For Hints to be processed on both publisher and subscriber at back-up time
• For Publisher(s) and subscriber(s) to be able to apply Hints to their systems on-demand
• For the Hint mechanism to be self-maintaining

Approach:

The hint keys-only technique from 3.1.0 is being deprecated. The "follow the leader" propagation technique of .els files is being deprecated. The individual .els files on each system are being replaced with the centralized Hint Tracker/Server datastore for hints and their individual system status. The Hint Tracker is a local (not remote) Hint Server for configurations that do not use any remote systems.

Notes:

• Hints will do the same things they did before. But how it's done will be entirely different, along with some new capabilities.
• These are also steps toward Version 5 where individual users will be able to manage content in a controlled way.
• This is going to take some time. In the meantime the rest of ELS is reasonably well tested and working.

See:

• Hints must be created on a single publisher #117

Feedback requested.

[Corionis]

Basic code has been completed Switching to Windows then macOS for cross-platform testing.

[Corionis]

The redesign of Hints involved deprecating the Hint Keys-only mode. Now Hint Keys are required along with a Hint Tracker/Server to enable Hints. The Tracker/Server acts as the datastore for Hints and their statuses.

The changes caused a ripple effect involving a lot of the code. The redesign and implementation is "done" and requires further testing. So the Hints Issue #117 has been completed. Have returned to the full regression tests #122.