Comment 15 for bug 71228

Matt - I agree, the process is _really_ bad.

I would have applied your patch to the source code and compiled and tested it myself if I had the technical know-how. However I at the moment I am barely able to to compile anything, let alone patch it first. (Does one actually patch the source and then compile, or is the patch applied during compilation?)

It looks like you and Vish tried to follow the "normal" (and possibly the "right"?) process by forwarding your patch upstream to Gnome, however your patch was almost completely ignored. The pre-existing patch from Seemanta Dutta (which he continued to work on after you submitted your patch) was also ultimately ignored/rejected. Comments 45-49 in the upstream bug are very enlightening in this regard. So the normal process has failed. Badly.

So now Bilal's patch is in Ubuntu and Debian, but not in Gnome, which doesn't help any other non-Debian-based distributions which are shipping Rhythmbox. This of course is not Bilal's fault. This sort of failure on the part of the Rhythmbox/Gnome developers is probably one of the reasons why Banshee seems to be taking over as the music player of choice.