v0.8.0 - Comic & Collection Overhaul and PDF Settings Finally! #2851
Replies: 5 comments 7 replies
-
|
Can anyone recommend for me a tool that can identify, reorganize, and rename my comics collection so that it fits the standard required by Kavita? |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
The existing comic library still exists and is useable. But if you're looking to adhere to the comic vine one, mylar is the best out there. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
I never properly organized my comics in the first place. Figured this was a good time to do it. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
"You MUST perform a forced library scan on all libraries to migrate properly to the new foundation. Failure to do so may result in data loss." So how do you do that? I have been searching but can't find what to do. In ad-hoc tasks in settings, I don't see any scan. When I try to click on "Libraries" from the admin settings menu, it just spins forever and says "Something went wrong" I could really use a pointer, thanks. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Go into the admin dashboard under libraries and click edit on each library. You'll see the option to force scan there. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
In the admin dashboard, if I chose libraries, it just spins forever. Do I already have corruption? |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
You should check your logs. If your DB is corrupted you'll see db is malformed errors |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Thanks for the info. I ended up restarting the service and all looks well now! Congrats on the release |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
I appreciate the work that was put into this. However, I am having several issues. #1 - Metadata tagged using "Comictagger" , which gets data from Comicvine, is not showing up. I also do not understand why direct mirroring of library folder structure is not allowed. My comics are already ORGANIZED. Instead of grouping them on import as they are grouped in my library, I have to regroup them again. This seems a very easy fix/feature to have. I will add that even the prior "Comic" library setting and not the "Comic Vine" one is now not displaying metadata. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
This discussion is probably not an ideal place to have the full support of your issues or understanding of how the software works. Please create one issue per (or join the discord) and I can help you get the sorted. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Thank you for your work! I tryed to use CBL, but it doesn't work if i miss even single issue. It works like tkat in Komga. Thanks! |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Please create an issue. It has always worked that way. Make sure you hit next again after it shows you the dry run results to actually create the list. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Have you ever thought to yourself that you'd like to switch the foundation of your house from slab to pier and beam? Well, that's essentially what I've done with this release, and not only that, I had to do it without a single picture falling off the walls. This release comprises a whopping 48K lines of code added and 5.5K removed throughout 400 files.
In order for me to achieve my vision of Kavita being the best software out there for reading, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. When I started building Kavita, I had never thought of what it would be today nor the part it would take in my life. It was simply a tool for me to consume and collect Manga since Ubooquity didn't have support for rich metadata. As users came along, so did the scope. Some features were added with limited knowledge, like comics, and that lack of knowledge in the beginning became a problem for heavy comic collectors. In order to build towards my vision of being the best, I had to rewrite large portions of how Kavita functions, work closely with the community, and deliver the best product I could. I want to first and foremost thank @DieselTech, who has been a key component in this. He has been pushing me relentlessly over the past year and has had a major hand in shaping the features, working with hardcore collectors from other servers (Mylar, Komga, and the CBL initiative).
Now, let's get into the meat and potatoes. What is new in this release?
Comic Overhaul
In order to support these hardcore users, Kavita needs to align with the tools already in the space, primarily Mylar and CBL. Mylar serves as the collection tool, aligning with Comic Vine for standards of naming and tagging, while CBL provides a rich repository of reading lists to make navigating comics easier. One of the most important differences between the old 'Comic' library and the new 'Comic Vine' library is that the Volume number is always the year and is used in the generation of the Series title. The new library type is strictly for those who abide by the rules laid out by Comic Vine and CBL. CBL works around these assumptions for linking up issues from many series into one reading list.
But that's not all. Comics are unique; they can have Issue Ω, which should be between Issues 8 and 9, or how about issue 18.HU? These are unique situations that didn't particularly go well with Kavita's number-based system. Through a feat of engineering, Kavita can now support these situations and, not only that, will soon allow the admins to actually change the sort order, a feature which, to my knowledge, no other software supports. This also means that Issue 0 (which can happen in Manga too) is now supported.
From the massive amount of testing, users have reported that this new library meets their needs perfectly. There are other small things, like Annual Series relationships, updates to CBL Import flows, etc., but the major points are above. This feature took 30K lines of code and 3 weeks of development for me to deliver to the testers (plus 2 weeks more of testing).
Collection Overhaul
While we are on the topic of reworking major code, let's talk about collections. When I first coded these, I made a really bad call and tied them with Series (so a series belongs to a collection), but as I started working on new collection-related features, I realized how bad of a call this was. I needed collections to be user-based, like want-to-read or reading lists. While this isn't really needed now, it will be with a future update.
So, yet again, I had to plan on how to migrate user data to the new collections without data loss and rework a ton of code. These new collections are user-based, and through a new Role, non-admins can even promote their own collections and share them with the server. While I was in there, I also made bulk promote/demote easier. Another easy 5K lines of code added and just over 1K removed.
Misc
Finally, the large, foundational features are over, and we can talk about some of the smaller things, like finally adding PDF settings a year after adding a PDF reader. Yikes. That's right, I finally got around to it and added PDF settings, along with also adding tap-to-paginate to the PDF reader.
Another area that has been receiving attention is Themes. Kavita saw an influx of new themes recently (and a few bug fixes too). Quite a few users are using these themes, and they look pretty good. Check them out on our Theme Repo. It's really easy to build your own, so if you have an interest, I highly encourage you to give it a go.
Another thing you might have noticed is Kavita+ enhancements. Quite a few small things were updated, but the most important is that Kavita+ will now auto-fetch data when you add new series and slowly work in the background to fetch external metadata. I have more planned around reporting on the data and managing bad matches against Kavita+, especially as I am still planning on basic metadata fetching, but I have found that this drastically improves load times on new series and makes the experience much better.
Lastly, I mentioned this last release, but Diesel has been hard at work on a complete revamp of the wiki. As of v0.8, we have moved over to the new wiki. Older installs wiki links will no longer work. Thanks again to @DieselTech for yet another monumental add to Kavita.
Important
Important! Once you update to this release there are manually steps needed! You MUST perform a forced library scan on all libraries to migrate properly to the new foundation. Failure to do so may result in data loss.
This is a massive update, all progress data will be exported on the first run to config/progress_export.csv. The migrations may take up to 10 minutes to migrate. Do not stop midway, you will break your db and need to restore from a backup.
Kavita+ users: As mentioned last release, you are expected to stay up to date - 2 releases. Old Kavita+ APIs will be shutdown shortly after v0.8. You can update to v0.7.14 as the minimum. (Note: v0.7.14 is not available at launch due to CI/CD. Just update to v0.8)
The default emailer was supposed to be turned off last release. I held it longer to give time. The emailer will be turned off after the v0.8 release.
This is a MASSIVE update, some data loss can be expected. I spent weeks trying to minimize any data loss and have provided an export. I apologize ahead of time if any occurs. If you are running into issues, do not hesitate to reach out to support on discord.
Unfortunately, during deployment, the CI/CD pipeline had an issue and v0.7.14 is now a pre-v0.8 nightly. We are current investigating a way to restore the old image for prosperity sake.
Added
Changed
Fixed
Removed
API
This discussion was created from the release v0.8.0 - Comic & Collection Overhaul and PDF Settings Finally!.
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions