Moode as a daemon or package instead of OS

[mtnbrit]

Caveat: I haven't fully thought this through. 

Tim and Kent, have you considered making Moode a daemon or package that could be installed over stock raspbian, instead of a complete OS distro release as it is now? I would love to have moode running on my Pi that is doing multiple other things such as node-red, influxdb and pi-hole for example. This might even lighten the load on the release team and would certainly allow in-place updates instead of the fork-lift re-flash the SD card for major release updates. The Pi4 is now a very capable machine surely capable of running moode as a process with enough resources dedicated to it maintain high quality audio? Moode is based on stock raspbian anyway, so would imagine this is just a change of paradigm developing for a package instead bundling a complete OS distro. Thoughts?

[Tim Curtis]

Have a look at the build recipe for moOde and then think about whether this could be transformed into a "package" that could simply be installed into generic RaspiOS. https://github.com/moode-player/moode/bl..._v2.26.txt

[TheOldPresbyope]

I'm surprised the suggestion isn't to make moOde a containerized application.  One could even imaging deploying moOde and managing its updates/upgrades via the balenaCloud.

I'm not trying to be sharky cuz I love playing with technologies but my answer would have been similar to Tim's: try it and let us know how it goes. 


Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

lol, sounds so simple doesn't it.

I think there were a couple of threads last year about doing something with Docker or similar but no dev has taken this on. I certainly don't have the bandwidth for it.

[mtnbrit]

Its all about saving your bandwidth. Seems the procedure could be boiled down to a few steps: over standard raspbian, apt install dependencies, wget the moode zip, run a setup script. Ignore all the wif, networking and bluetooth stuff, use the stock mpd and mpc, alsa, usb, disk and file system deb packages.

Yes im sure im way oversimplifying it, and what you would end up with may not be the same Moode as your distro, but you would get the nice GUI over mpd and radio and library tools that are the essence of what people like about moode, and where most of your dev time is spent, and pays off. Call it moode lite.

If the moode.zip bundle is available for 6.7.1, I would love to take a crack at making a procedure.

Hoping to spark an open-ended discussion/exchange of ideas here.

[Tim Curtis]

I think you need to read and understand the Build Recipe. it provides everything you need to hack moOde. It's at the link I provided earlier.

[mtnbrit]

Yep I read it and get it. I tried to wget the moode700 zip but its not available. Is there one for the released version perhaps?

[Tim Curtis]

Yes, the Master branch has the release version.
https://github.com/moode-player/moode/bl..._v2.25.txt

[Tim Curtis]

Your best bet is to fork the Develop or Master branch into your own repo and then try to create what you envision as "moOde Lite". You never know, it might catch on :-)

[TheOldPresbyope]

Hoping to spark an open-ended discussion/exchange of ideas here.

Okay, so here's a few of my idiosyncratic thoughts. (By the way, thanks for including me in the original post, but keep in mind that moOde is Tim's baby. I starting helping some years ago but mostly in testing, dealing with the OS, and other ancilliary tasks.)
 

Seems the procedure could be boiled down to a few steps: over standard raspbian, apt install dependencies, wget the moode zip, run a setup script. Ignore all the wif, networking and bluetooth stuff, use the stock mpd and mpc, alsa, usb, disk and file system deb packages.

I know this can be done because at least two folks---I being one---ported the guts of moOde to different SBCs some years ago. I don't see this process as a great improvement for end users compared to 1) flash uSD card, 2) boot, 3) run. Like Tim said, maybe other folk will find this approach useful and it will take off. Warning: it will be up to whoever does this to support those folks.

Its all about saving your bandwidth.

This might even lighten the load on the release team

I think you are misunderstanding how the development time is spent. The actual building of the release image can be handed off to automation like the mosbuild scripts (see Tim's other github repo) which after a little setup run without manual intervention. Call me crazy, but I don't think developing and maintaining a moOde package separate from yet consistent with all the other packages is any less work than developing and maintaining a built image.

I would love to have moode running on my Pi that is doing multiple other things such as node-red, influxdb and pi-hole for example.

The Pi4 is now a very capable machine surely capable of running moode as a process with enough resources dedicated to it maintain high quality audio?

Moode is based on stock raspbian anyway, so would imagine this is just a change of paradigm developing for a package instead bundling a complete OS distro.

Okay, I get it, you want to have your cake and eat it too. Well, since moOde is built on RaspiOS you can still install (or build from scratch) and run all sorts of software. IMHO collisions in usage are inevitable (like the Pi-Hole Docker container wants ports 53 and 80) and we're only quibbling over who has to resolve them.

The moOde project, among others, was undertaken to make a high quality stand-alone music player for the primitive RPi models available at the time. Every part was crafted together to be sure the user had as seamless and good sounding an experience as possible. It is still the case that moOde is shipped to run on every model from an RPiZeroW to an RPi4B.

Sure the RPi4B is the most powerful Raspberry Pi yet, but it's still just a cheap SBC (it costs less than the power supply on the Intel-based tower in the basement I use as a compute server, supplemental NAS, etc.). Call me crazy (again), but I don't see the economy in forcing one to be my all-purpose system. I want my moOde player to sit in the cabinet with its DAC and downstream audio system and make beautiful music. For this I find lower power models, notably the RPi3A+, to be a better choice of platform. I have other computers (including lots of RPi models) which I use for various other tasks.

YMMV as they say. The wonderful thing about FOSS projects like moOde is that you can take your own cut at it. According to github, to date the repo has been forked 79 times. You'll make that 80.

Regards,
Kent