Music

One of my many projects is one that creates a database from my music library. It started off as an example to demonstrate many of the features of javautil and took on a life of its own.

I initially used jidlib3 for extracting tags from mp3 files. I have spent far more time than I care to admit fixing many of its problems including

• Resource leaks - files left open and exceptions thrown
• Improper handling of unicode text in mp3 files
• Exceptions thrown in constructors for such things as unbalanced parentheses in file names
• Exceptions thrown while iterating through tags caused by logic errors
• Logic errors in the programs in indexing through character arrays throwing various exceptions

I finally figured the program was irredeemable and moved on.

entagged

Written in French, class names, method names and comments are all foreign to me.

The build.xml wouldn't compile as the code used generics and 1.4 compliance was explicated.

Problems with the unix script commands to startup, lines terminated in CR/LF, invalid classpath separators, screen messages improperly spelled, moved on in a hurry.

Did have a fair gui, but there are more robust native tools that accomplish that.

jaudiotagger

Today I looked at a few libraries, now I am trying out.

Maven build that worked straight out of the box. After a quick maven install I modified the pom of javautil-mp3 for the additional dependency. Examining the pom.xml I learned how to do a few things which had escaped me. I did have to correct the file to get javadoc produced as it was configured to use non standard locations for source but the source was in the standard location 'src/main/java'

Strangely enough the test classes were located under 'src/main/test' with a path of ./src/main/java/org/jaudiotagger/test/ not consistent with maven project standards. I haven't run the test suites yet or examined code coverage.

The documentation was weak, but with a couple online cookbooks, I was wading through the source code in no time. It took me about half an hour to change my implementation.

Copious logger messages.

Hosting

Evaluating multiple companies to host javautil.org but being in the midst of a house acquisition, this is taking a back seat.