Is the project dead?

[CuloArdido]

I ask because the last commit is from November 2021 and the domain mkchromecast.com expired.

[muammar]

I have not had too much time to work on it, and I am not using Chromecast too much anymore. I see there is lots of interest still, and it would be nice to get some help. Would you like to help with this, "sore ass"?

Best,

PS. Interesante username.

[tmatthews5511]

If only I could hack python ... that would be my dream. Otherwise, I would gladly help.

May I make a suggestion? The youtube-dl project seems to have stopped. Could we replace youtube-dl with its fork, yt-dlp?

I am mostly using my Chromecast with VPN's, using OpenWrt. It makes for a very interesting experience.

[pataquets]

@muammar This might be of your interest: https://adoptoposs.org/

[pataquets]

Also, there is useful info and help at opensource.guide, especially on the best practices section.
Hope it helps, and thank you very much for sharing this project!

[pataquets]

@muammar : new issues keep coming. I suggest you to pin this issue to make it visible and, hopefully, help recruit new maintainers or find somebody wanting to adopt it. Even an issue title change to "maintainers wanted" or something along the lines of the above links.
It would be sad if the project is left to die, with the obvious interest in it, judging by the issues.

[Free-Radical]

I'm a python noob but used to do extensive work in network security and packet level stuff in C long ago. I am willing to dedicate time to this project , How and where do i start to get a grasp ?
I would prefer to start w/ getting mkchromecast functional again 1st in Linux/Ubuntu if possible.

[PartialVolume]

I'm a python noob but used to do extensive work in network security and packet level stuff in C long ago. I am willing to dedicate time to this project , How and where do i start to get a grasp ? I would prefer to start w/ getting mkchromecast functional again 1st in Linux/Ubuntu if possible.

I don't know about anybody else but certainly for audio it seems to be working fine for me on KDE Neon (based on Ubuntu 21.04). Apart from that icon on the task bar. Starting the server with mkchromecast -s and choosing your cast device works great. How exactly is it not working?

[Free-Radical]

I am running Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon. Using command line or applet , no streaming devices are ever found (they're definitely there, ip ping-able and working). Output from cli-

$ ./bin/mkchromecast 
Mkchromecast v0.3.9
Creating Pulseaudio Sink...
Open Pavucontrol and Select the Mkchromecast Sink.
Starting Local Streaming Server
[Done]
Selected backend: parec
Selected audio codec: mp3
Default bitrate used: 192k
Default sample rate used: 44100Hz.
PID of main process: 757410
PID of streaming process: 757414
 * Serving Flask app 'mkchromecast.audio'
 * Debug mode: off
WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment. Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Running on http://192.168.1.196:5000
Press CTRL+C to quit
No devices found!
Cleaning up /tmp/...
[Done]

[merceroncode]

Tbh I am interested in helping in this project, but... I'm not sure where to even start. @muammar How did you figure out the spec? Is there anything public or this was all reverse engineered from scratch?

[warmachinesocial]

Hi everyone, I will be looking into this project and contribute because I need this on fedora plus wanna learn about audio on linux side, don't know much about mac. Plus hoping to migrate to pipewire however I haven't done coding on desktop side so it should be interesting

[PartialVolume]

@nishp77 I've been using this program for a while now, using the master 0.3.9. I never have any problems with it just works fine on my main system:

Operating System: KDE neon 5.27
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.107.0
Qt Version: 5.15.10
Kernel Version: 5.19.0-45-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700H
Memory: 15.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Graphics

[xsdg]

@muammar I'm happy to contribute bugfixes or take ownership of the project. I have a lot (20+ years) of OSS experience, and a lot of professional Python experience. I've been a co-maintainer for the Geeqie image viewer project for ~10 years, and executed the conversion of that 20-year-old codebase from C to C++ earlier this year. Plus, I have a Chromecast that I use every day.

[muammar]

@muammar I'm happy to contribute bugfixes or take ownership of the project. I have a lot (20+ years) of OSS experience, and a lot of professional Python experience. I've been a co-maintainer for the Geeqie image viewer project for ~10 years, and executed the conversion of that 20-year-old codebase from C to C++ earlier this year. Plus, I have a Chromecast that I use every day.

Thank you @xsdg. I sent you an invite. I'd be happy to have your help.

[xsdg]

Just to provide a quick update here, I've been working on simplifying, fortifying, and adding tests for the underlying fundamentals of how mkchromecast works. The high-level goal is for mkchromecast to be simpler, to be more maintainable, and to be easier for non-experts to update as time moves forward. I'm trying to keep everything working on HEAD through this process, but the reality is that things always break during these kinds of large refactors.

If you want to watch as things progress, keep an eye on meta-issues #425 and #434 .

[muammar]

Just to provide a quick update here, I've been working on simplifying, fortifying, and adding tests for the underlying fundamentals of how mkchromecast works. The high-level goal is for mkchromecast to be simpler, to be more maintainable, and to be easier for non-experts to update as time moves forward. I'm trying to keep everything working on HEAD through this process, but the reality is that things always break during these kinds of large refactors.

If you want to watch as things progress, keep an eye on meta-issues #425 and #434 .

Thank you very much for your hard work on this. I really appreciate it.

[psmgeelen]

Hey @muammar , I have extensive experience with Python, and I am an avid user of your application. The application seems to broken in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I think because the new distro is using python v3.12 natively. Is this something I could support you with?

[xsdg]

@psmgeelen Hi, please file a bug that at least includes a stack trace. I haven't seen any other reports of mkchromecast being functionally broken. Feel free to also file a PR to resolve the issue once you've filed the bug.

[pataquets]

@psmgeelen Reviewing carefully project's activity, looks like to me that project has been revived thanks to @xsdg stepping up into maintainership, and if you look closely there are recent commits and some ongoing refactors. I guess you'd be better filing a new issue.
Although I'm no longer using it (it had too many issues back when I needed it), I'd like to give big thanks to him for that and to @muammar for the project and for taking steps to prevent it from dying.
Perhaps project should make more visible the new maintainership status and, even better, set some clear expectations about it, whatever they would be. And, in case @xsdg
feels like to step down in the future, how about creating an organization, @muammar?

Turns out that, after realizing the newly bred activity, I've already started to dig my gadget bins for my old Chromecast 😆

EDIT: just saw @xsdg beat me at responding while I was composing this post.

[muammar]

@pataquets thanks for your message. Creating an organization sounds good. I have not been using the app so much because life has caught up and I am too busy. I just cast from the iPhone to my sonos system (when I have time). @xsdg did a good job refactoring the source code so it has a higher standard than before (I'm not a professional programmer). I see some people still value this app, and it would be great that it's being maintained.

[muammar]

Hey @muammar , I have extensive experience with Python, and I am an avid user of your application. The application seems to broken in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I think because the new distro is using python v3.12 natively. Is this something I could support you with?

Yes, please. If you know how to solve it either @xsdg or me would be more than happy to review your contributions. Thanks for your interest in this.

[psmgeelen]

Wow, that's some response! I will write a proper bug-ticket and will work on a solution and thank you for @muammar and @xsdg for creating and maintaining it respectively. I appreciate your time! I will share my Issue as soon as it is ready.