msgfmt is an unlisted dependency (from gettext)

[Peter]

I tried to install entertainer-0.5.1 from the tar ball on Ubuntu Lucid 10.4,

~/Downloads/entertainer-0.5.1$ python setup.py install --prefix=$HOME
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 15, in <module>
    translations_generator.update_mos()
  File "/home/peterjc/Downloads/entertainer-0.5.1/tools/translations_generator.py", line 113, in update_mos
    call(['msgfmt', po, '-o', mo_out])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 480, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 633, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 1139, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

~/Downloads/entertainer-0.5.1$ msgfmt
The program 'msgfmt' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install gettext

This is not mentioned in the docs/DEPENDENCIES file.

After installing gettext, the install finished without error.

[Matt Layman (mblayman)]

Peter,

Thanks for your interest in Entertainer. Unfortunately, it is no longer being actively developed by anyone on the original team. I was, more or less, the last man standing, and there was just too much broken stuff to fix with my extremely limited free time. Judging by the amount of bug reports that you've submitted, I believe you understand how much is broken.

I would suggest investing time in some of the other FOSS media center options. Perhaps XBMC, Moovida, or Myth TV. I have no intention of picking Entertainer back up (in any serious fashion) so unless other folks step up to take over, the project will linger unmaintained.

Sorry,
Matt

[Peter (maubp)]

Thanks for the personal reply Matt,

I've had a little look at XMBC, Boxee and MythTV - none of them immediately grabbed me. The interface I've liked the most so far has been Moovida 1.0, which like Entertainer was written in Python and OSS. However Fluendo have switched to a partly closed source plan for Moovida 2.0 and switched languages. There is a possible fork of the old code base, but it hasn't yet really taken off:
https://launchpad.net/~elisa-developers

So I thought I should checkout the competition. I'd taken a look at Entertainer a while back (maybe a year or so - the screenshots looked nice) and at the time you didn't have anything ready to install, so the 0.5 and 0.5.1 releases were a good sign I thought. Having installed it, tried it out, dug a little deeper, and filed a few bugs, I agree there is a lot of work to be done to make this really usable. What you have is promising though - maybe someone else will take it over? Given the circumstances, I won't be upset if my proposed little fixes don't get committed. It was still an educational exercise for me, fun in its way.

Regards,

Peter