Dim needs a new release!

[julianandrews]

The current release is almost a year old, and isn't providing a great experience.

I downloaded the release, ran it, and added a TV library and it auto matched maybe 10% of my shows. I went to manually match shows, and I had over 5000 unmatched files in folders name like "Season 2" with dozens of shows all clumped together. I started the manual matching process and it seemed to work on some shows, but other times failed silently. I went to file an issue and realized how old the code I was running was.

Running on the current version I had only 260 unmatched files, and all of those I understand why they didn't match.

Dim looks like a fantastic program. I've used Plex and Jellyfin, and neither comes close in terms of performance and smoothness, but the current release really isn't doing it justice!

[vgarleanu]

It does indeed! Dim has come a long way since the last release. The reason there isn't a new release is because we've added some new features but they lack polish, not to mention that we have a improved scanner which 10x's the scanners performance or so.

At the moment all of our resources are focused on the android and ios app, however we are close to getting over the hardest technical challenges there and will be able to focus on polishing the webui.

There will be a new anniversary release alongside a beta release of the mobile apps soon!

EDIT: Ok it might take a likkle longer :)

[SleeperSmith]

@julianandrews have you considered using the docker release? the :dev tag seems to be only 3 months behind (not that i know where it is on the release).

That as opposed to the bin release which seems to be over 2 years old at this point.

@vgarleanu should we stay away from the :master tag on the container?

[julianandrews]

@SleeperSmith It's good to know the docker image is more up to date. For my purposes, I'm fine with just compiling from source, and I've already got that set up and working.

I filed an issue because I suspect a lot of people wandering into the project will try downloading the latest release like I did, and the experience isn't great!

The other reason more recent releases would be nice is that it lets people know when there's a version that's expected to be tested and functional. I'm not really keen to install a docker image tagged dev for a project that I'm not actively working on - I'd expect to to just break from time to time.

[nwithan8]

No new release in nearly two years, no new commits in 6 months, PRs stalled in review. Is it safe to assume this project is (unfortunately) dead?

[niamu]

I'll offer my opinion on this since my commits were the most recent contributions. I'm not a project member, just a contributor that hopes for the success of this project.

I don't think Dim is dead, but I do think it is going to continue to move at a very slow pace for a while. The library management goals that Dim has means that any arbitrary directory structure and filename should be supported which is very ambitious in my opinion and currently a blocker for some other library features (trailers, behind the scenes videos, etc.) I had initially planned to contribute to library management for parity with Plex by copying their conventions, but I learned this would have been a limiting step to the overall vision of the project.

I personally stepped back from contributing for a while because I felt my desire to work on specific features and improve the web interface specifically was at odds with other goals the project leads had and I didn't want to step on anyone's toes. When I last communicated with them there was active discussion to move more into Rust frontend frameworks as well as continuing to move forward on mobile apps. Personally, my interests at the moment are just improving the library management and server-side rendering of the UI (as seen in this draft PR), but continuing to move in that direction meant I would have been in conflict with the move to new Rust tooling for the frontend and most likely side-stepping the current UI design plans for the project as well.

I've contemplated moving forward with my own fork of the project in the past, but that is another ambitious undertaking unto itself. I do not currently have the video streaming knowledge necessary to make such a project successful on my own and still highly value the skills and vision the Dim project has amongst the current team members. Again, I have no desire to step on anyone's toes and I certainly don't want to paint myself as some sort of potential saviour of the project when I have my own narrow goals for the project that would likely be unfulfilling to others.

If I was mistaken in any of my assessment regarding project plans I apologize. I'm more than happy to continue working on that draft PR and make further attempts to move the project forward, but at this time I believe the project leads are still pursuing aspects that I don't currently align with as a developer.

I wish the project nothing but success and excitedly await the next steps it takes.

[barolo]

It would be nice to know what actually happened here, though; the project went from being very active to dead in the span of half a year.

[edgerunnergit]

I'm a newbie, but if someone helped, I would love to contribute long-term for this project (in case it gets revived or forked by people enthusiastic enough.)