pyatv: Help me squash bugs before 0.9.0 is released

What’s on your mind?

So, I’m getting very close to release v0.9.0 of pyatv, containing lots of updates. Especially under the hood. The biggest update is however the “MRP-over-AirPlay”-support, that is required to work with tvOS 15. Adding support for that also made it possible to support the HomePod with very little effort, so it is now possible to do that as well.

It would be really great to get some help testing things before shipping to iron out the last quirks (as I’m sure there are quite a few…). What mainly needs testing is tvOS 15 support and the HomePod, as mentioned. But general usage is also welcomed (other protocols, streaming, etc.) as a lot of improvements have been made that changes the general way pyatv works.

The HomePod does not require particular pairing or such, it should just work now. For instance to see what is playing:

$ atvremote -s 10.0.10.84 playing
  Media type: Unknown
Device state: Playing
       Title: Unpaid Intern
      Artist: Bo Burnham
       Album: Inside (The Songs)
    Position: 5/34s (14.7%)
      Repeat: Off
     Shuffle: Off

The Apple TV requires credentials however, so you need to pair with it first (atvremote -s <ip> --protocol airplay pair) and pass them via --airplay-credentials (atvremote -s <ip> --airplay-credentials <creds> playing). Only AirPlay credentials are really needed to test tvOS 15 support. Credentials obtained with previous versions of pyatv will not work, so you need to re-pair for this one.

This will work with tvOS 14 as well, but it’s tricky to know if MRP tunneled over AirPlay or if regular MRP is used. An easy way is to look for this line in the --debug log:

2021-09-09 06:18:36 DEBUG [pyatv.protocols.airplay.remote_control]: Setting up remote control connection to 10.0.10.84:7000

It’s also possible to limit to just testing AirPlay by specifying --scan-protocols:

$ atvrremote -s <ip> --scan-protocols airplay --airplay-credentials <creds> playing

One last thing: there are pre-built docker images now. So it’s possible to test pyatv without having to install anything other than Docker. Version 0.9.0 will be the first proper “container release”, but all commits to the master branch are automatically pushed as new images. It’s as easy as this to run from master:

$ docker run  --rm --network=host ghcr.io/postlund/pyatv:master atvremote scan

I will be so thankful for all the help I can get here, to thank you!