Bugzilla – Bug 3785
Ability to mark iTunes playlists as 'don't use'
Last modified: 2009-04-30 23:31:20 UTC
I upgraded from 6.2.2 to 6.3.1. After the upgrade, the ability to delete (iTunes derived) playlists via the SlimServer browser interface disappeared. After clicking on a playlist, the screen with the list of songs no longer has buttons at the top. Tried this using Safari and FireFox browsers with same result. Question: Was the button code omitted or altered in 6.3.1? Additional information: Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 with 3 GB DDR SDRAM OS 10.4.7 Browsers used: Safari 2.0.4 (419.3) and Deer Park (FireFox G5 build) 1.5.0.4
itunes playlists are marked as no edit, becuase slimserver is not able to send those edits back to iTunes. The noEdit flag also means the delete button is gone, as the playlist cannot be truly deleted; it would only reappear as itunes gets reloaded. see HTML/EN/browse_playlist.html, lines 16 and 43. see also bug 3311, which was noted in the changelog for 6.3.0
I do not see why my request was invalid. I do not expect SlimServer to remove the playlist from iTunes, I only expect it to not display playlists on the SlimServer device. This functionality existed in version 6.2.
As a bug, it is invalid as the server is working as designed. Again, referring to the issues raised in bug 3311 for why the "functionality" from 6.2.2 is not as it is now. Strictly speaking, a delete function can only work when such an item is actually able to be deleted. Instead, it sounds like what you want is a way to disable itunes playlists or certain playlist, much the same was as tracks can be disabled. Not sure how this could work exactly, as marking it in Slimserver DB would be erased on a "Cliear library and rescan", but this could be flagged as an enhancement allowing ideas to be shared for UI and implementation.
Sadly, that feature only existed due to a convenient side effect of a bug, is the root problem. We had a large number of bugs (including several that crashed Slimserver) that were due to the fact that apparent edits (including deleting) of playlists were not able to take place in reality. You can search on "edit playlist" to see a list of most of these bugs. Our solution to this was to make sure that Slimserver was to implement the noEdit flag KDF mentioned. Now Slimserver is only able to perform actions that are actually possible, instead of failing to do actions and then 'hallucinating' (if you will) that the action was performed successfully. I agree it would be a handy feature, and I've changed the title of the bug to reflect a possible implementation. Please feel free to add any details you'd also like us to consider.
This actually is a dupe of the even older bug 2611. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 2611 ***