92 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
# alarm clock plugin for DeaDBeeF
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## About
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This plugin allows the DeaDBeeF music player to serve as an alarm clock.
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Even with its comprehensive set of command-line options, DeaDBeeF is
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ultimately a graphical program, in most cases completely unreachable
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from the restricted environment in which crontab shell scripts are executed.
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The MPRIS plugin[1] does allow some control of the media player from a crontab
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script, but because a script executed by cron usually cannot find the dbus session bus
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address in its environment, this variable must be hard-coded in the
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shell script you intend to use for activating DeaDBeeF. (For a clumsy way to
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automate the hard-coding of session bus address, you might add some sed commands
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to your window manager's autostart script, overwriting a definition line in the
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*activate-DeaDBeeF* script.) Then having surmounting this
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obstacle, you'll discover that the MPRIS plugin implements only one method for
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selecting a particular file for playback: OpenUri. Even if xdg-mime could be
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persuaded that the file extension m3u indicates a filetype audio/x-mpegurl rather
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than text/plain (so that the OpenUri argument is not immediately rejected upon
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receipt of the dbus message), the MPRIS plugin only implements OpenUri using
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the method `deadbeef->plt_add_file2`, while a playlist would require
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`deadbeef->plt_load2`. So to assemble an entire playlist using the methods available
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in the MPRIS plugin, you would have to parse the metadata of each song to determine
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how long the parent process should sleep between successive calls of OpenUri.
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**TLDR**: working around the limitations of crontab and MPRIS is more
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trouble than building a specialized plugin for alarm clock functionality.
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To close the gap between DeaDBeeF and its console-interface counterparts
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(moc, mpd, cmus -- all of which *can* be controlled by scripts in a crontab),
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this plugin translates the essential components of the audacious alarm
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plugin[2] into the DeaDBeeF idiom. The configuration dialog lets you choose
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which days of the week the alarm goes off, what time of day, and which
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playlist you want loaded. Leaving the playlist field empty (or selecting
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an invalid file) will just start playback at the beginning of the current
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list when the alarm goes off.
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1. https://github.com/Serranya/deadbeef-mpris2-plugin
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2. https://github.com/audacious-media-player/audacious-plugins/tree/master/src/alarm
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## What is missing
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The following features were present in the audacious alarm plugin, but
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have not been implemented here.
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- Volume fading from quiet to loud after a fixed time interval. If you need that kind of
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control, all the underlying audio stacks (ALSA, OSS, Pipewire, Pulseaudio, sndio) offer
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command-line mixer tools that work fine when executed within crontab scripts, and you
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can just leave the DeaDBeeF volume slider at its highest level.
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- Stopping the playback after a specified time interval.
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(TODO: let the plugin itself turn off repeat mode if that behaviour is
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desired, simply by adding a "disable repeat mode" checkbox to the alarm
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configuration dialog. It then becomes the user's responsibility to make
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sure a playlist of the appropriate length is selected, so playback doesn't
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continue past the transition from sleep to wakefulness.)
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- Setting a different alarm time for each day of the week. Sleep
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professionals recommend that you stick to a consistent bedtime and
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wakeup time for optimal health. (But if you have a healthy sleep regimen in
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the first place, you probably wake up at the right time without an alarm.
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Omitting this feature thus makes the plugin less useful to people who
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genuinely need a mechanical disruption of their established sleep-wake cycle.)
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## How to install
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### For CRUX users
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- cd to a directory in your local ports overlay
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- download the source code from this host:
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`httpup sync https://git.sdf.org/jmq/cruxports/raw/branch/master/#deadbeef-alarm deadbeef-alarm`
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- prt-get depinst install deadbeef-alarm
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### For users of other Linux distributions
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- check that all dependencies and header files are installed (DeaDBeeF
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and glib)
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- save the source code and the Makefile
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(`https://git.sdf.org/jmq/cruxports/deadbeef-alarm/alarm.cc`
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and `https://git.sdf.org/jmq/cruxports/deadbeef-alarm/Makefile`)
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into a working directory.
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- cd to the working directory and run make. Invoke make with
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`GLIB_CXX_FLAGS="$(pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0)"` and
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`GLIB_LD_FLAGS="$(pkg-config --libs glib-2.0)"` if your
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distribution has installed the shared glib libraries in non-standard
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locations.
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- run `make install` , optionally prepending a custom setting for PREFIX
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(such as $HOME/.local) or DESTDIR.
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## How to contribute
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Patches are welcome. See the header of the accompanying Pkgfile for
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contact information.
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