ftblog

A few weeks ago, I've started to work on arename again. Since then, I've tagged
two preview "releases" (v4.0-pre0 and v4.0-pre1). These are mainly for people
who would like to take an early look at arename4's major changes.

First and foremost, that would be the big change in backend land. In earlier
versions, arename used three different backends to gather information from mp3
files, ogg and flac files. With arename4 that changes entirely. The new version
uses Audio::Scan, which is able to work with many file formats on its own. That
simplifies the way arename fetches information, which has a positive impact on
code complexity. Audio::Scan is not available in debian yet. But I've been told
it is being worked on.

From the user's point of view, that breaks the old hook API, since there were
a number of file-type specific hooks. They are not needed anymore and were
therefore removed. The other impact for the user is that arename now supports
many more file formats than before. See the manual for details.

The second big change is the introduction of more complex expressions in
templates. Again, there are corner cases, in which this change may introduce
backwards compatibility issues. Though, with "normal, non-constructed
templates, that shouldn't be the case. Again, consult the manual for details.

Because of the fundamental changes described above, breaking backwards
compatibility was inevitable. It is the main reason the upcoming release will
be yet another major version release.


Feel free to try arename4 today (I'm using v4.0-pre1 exclusively). But please
be extra-careful and make sure you're using the `--dryrun' option a lot, to
avoid surprises. If you find anything unusual or even bugs, please tell me.

Please do not use the preview releases of arename4 as a drop-in replacement for
arename3. There is no documentation for upgrading yet. So just don't do that.