MistServer v3 for Windows/Mac - When?

[Jimmy Knudsen]

I sent a drect message asking this question more than a month ago on the official homepage, but NEVER got an answer.

I am wondering, as I can see there are updates for the Linux edition on a regular basis, but no news at all about the Windows/Mac version.

[Jaron Viëtor]

Hello Jimmy,

We recently merged some code that makes the Mac build compile again: https://github.com/DDVTECH/mistserver/commit/4181b52857f9018a6598df4e0cfcc673e95beffa

There are still a few other issues that prevent regular Mac releases, but those are planning to be addressed "soon" as well.

For Windows, compilation was never an issue - but some of the changes introduced with 3.0 don't play nice with how Windows implements shared memory (specifically, the quirk that Windows auto-deletes shared memory objects that are not actively open in any process - something that regularly happens with Mist's 3.0 builds, causing breakage). A fix for that is also possible, but it might be a few more months before we get around to it at the current pace.

Since both Windows and Mac builds sort-of-but-not-really work, we stopped releasing them temporarily until those issues are resolved.

We're hoping to re-introduce Mac builds going forward from the next release. Windows is currently being aimed at for the release after that.

Normally we aim for approximately 1 release every 3 months, but the upcoming 3.2 release is running a little later than that already (because of some of the new code in this version working best when combined with other code that isn't fully ready yet).

Hope that gives you the information you were looking for!

Regards,

Jaron

On Mon, Nov 7, 2022 at 11:54 AM Jimmy Knudsen <snowm...@gmail.com> wrote:

I sent a drect message asking this question more than a month ago on the official homepage, but NEVER got an answer.

I am wondering, as I can see there are updates for the Linux edition on a regular basis, but no news at all about the Windows/Mac version.

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[Jimmy Knudsen]

I would like to follow up in this question, as I asked more than 10 months ago, and still nothing has happened.

Is there any timeframe on that release for Winodws/Mac?

[Balder Vietor]

Hey Jimmy, 

The Windows builds have been quite a challenge. We've explored pretty much any possibility of using shared memory under Windows like the 3.0 builds, but in the end just couldn't get it to a good enough stability/quality comparable to the Linux builds. The Mac builds were also facing similar issues here as Mac has limited shared memory usage compared to Linux as well.

Since then we've actually started the work on making Windows and Mac builds work properly with disk storage instead of shared memory. It isn't perfect as you'd need more storage the higher your usage gets, but it'll get the best reliability. As for when this is done: We were actually shooting for this IBC, but we didn't quite make that. I'm not 100% sure if it'll be in the next patch release (as we are planning one soon after the IBC), but it should definitely be before the end of this year. 

With kind regards,

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mistserver/f4065de7-980b-450d-b286-540d364adf69n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jimmy Knudsen]

Follow-up (again).

In september 2023, I was told that v3 would be released before the new year, but still nothing has happened.

Quote from Balder Vietor: "it should definitely be before the end of this year"

I know about developing software, and that there can be problems, but you don't give ANY information about how it's going.

Couldn't you at least keep us in the loop, and let us know SOMETHING?

[Balder Vietor]

Hey Jimmy,

Yeah we quite didn't get to the "should" part. We have been making progress on it slowly, but we're making it more challenging for ourselves by adding additional features that aren't quite as multiplatform as we'd like. Part of the problem is also that none of our premium users rely on Windows builds, so often projects keep getting pushed in front of it.

We're finishing up some big projects in the coming 2 weeks, so I'll try and finish this after. Chances are high we can finally make the next release the one that has Windows builds included. It's been long overdue after all.

With kind regards,

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mistserver/971667cc-7746-473d-95f2-3d19df9cee3dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Jimmy Knudsen]

How is it looking with that v3 update for Windows?

[Jaron Viëtor]

Hello Jimmy,

The upcoming 3.4 release will in fact have Windows builds again! We finally got around to fixing the 3.X version Windows incompatibilities as well as updating our build system to support all the dependencies.

If you need a preview of the upcoming release we can probably upload a dev build to the website already - though note that we unfortunately had to remove the tray icon application for the moment (so it's a "plain" terminal application again).

It should also be possible to build the current `development` branch from git within cygwin "out of the box" yourself if you want to give that a go and not wait for us to release it.

Regards,

Jaron

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mistserver/e5831459-b91a-4cf3-87c6-cd62f4b6b5b0n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jimmy Knudsen]

Hi

That sounds great. As long as I can find a guide for setting it up (as I expect big changes from 2.8) then I would like to test out the preview, if you would put it up :)

[Balder Vietor]

Hey Jimmy,

Took us a bit longer to get everything in there. I did spot an issue with the shared memory not always completely clearing. So if you shut down MistServer & restart it and notice issues you might want to close down MistServer, go to the install folder and delete the contents of the dev/shm folder.

https://r.mistserver.org/dl/mistserver_cyg64Vdev.exe

The usage instructions are quite easy:

Once installed you boot up MistServer by activating the MistServer shell. You should have a shortcut in your start menu. You can automatically search for it by writing "mistserver".

Usage of MistServer 3.0 is quite similar to MistServer 2.18, the biggest difference is that streams now have a process, which can be used to enable encoding on streams. I wouldn't try and use them just yet as we're still confirming whether they work when the requirements are installed. 

The other big difference would be that SRT will work natively now instead of requiring srt-live-transmit installed. We've implemented the libSRT library and it works just fine for Windows as well. 

Obviously since this is a development build there might still be some weird things in there, so if you do encounter something you're doubting please do let us know. 

With kind regards,

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mistserver/311dc450-e9bf-4d98-ad1e-327e6a42ded6n%40googlegroups.com.