Two cold-start findings from the same pass. They share a call site in
`MainScreen`'s post-frame block, so they land together.
## Cronet was 33% of time-to-interactive
`createPlatformClient()` built the shared `CronetEngine` inline, so whichever
consumer happened to create the first HTTP client paid for it — and that landed
between `database_ready` and `credentials_loaded`, i.e. squarely on the path to
the first usable screen.
Measured on the Amlogic SC2 box, phase marks relative to `dart_main`, by
temporarily forcing the existing `_cronetBroken` fallback so no engine is ever
built:
| phase | engine built inline | engine never built |
|---|---|---|
| database_ready | +455 | +456 |
| credentials_loaded | +1171 | +703 |
| binding_settled | +1331 | +827 |
| main_screen | +1394 | +932 |
So ~462 ms, fully serial. Logcat shows where it goes: `DynamiteModule
loadModule2NoCrashUtils` then `HttpFlagsLoader` reading
`com.google.android.gms/app_httpflags/flags.binarypb`. The cause is provider
*enumeration*, not selection — `CronetEngine.Builder(Context)` calls
`isEnabled()` on every registered provider, and `PlayServicesCronetProvider`
answers that by installing the Play services Dynamite module. `play-services-cronet`
arrives transitively through `media3-datasource-cronet`, and `package:cronet_http`
offers no way to choose a provider, so the only lever available in Dart is *when*
the cost is paid.
Android's `createPlatformClient()` now returns a client that resolves its
delegate per request: the tuned IOClient that already backstops a broken Cronet
until the shared engine exists, Cronet afterwards. Per-request matters — a
`MediaServerHttpClient` builds its client in a constructor initializer and lives
for the process, so deciding once at construction would have pinned primary
media-server traffic to HTTP/1.1 forever, which is a silent steady-state
regression rather than a fix. `warmUpPlatformHttpClient()` then builds the engine
from `MainScreen`'s post-frame block.
Result: `main_screen` +1394 -> +915 ms, and logcat carries both client lines
(`IOClient (Android fallback)` then `CronetClient`), proving the swap. The build
now runs from +1023 to +1419, entirely after the first screen, and produces no
Choreographer or Davey report — the UI is static waiting on hub content there, so
there are no frames to drop.
## Plex Home refresh raced the offline decision
`PlexHomeService.start()` conflated disk hydration with going live: it decoded
the cached `plex_home_users_*` entries *and* subscribed to connection changes,
installed a refresh timer and fired `_refreshAll()`. It was invoked straight from
a provider `create:`, so on a box with no network — or the flaky 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi
these devices typically have — it started requests that would time out during the
exact window the startup gate needs. Its immediate neighbour
`ActiveProfileBinder` is explicitly not auto-started for this reason and says so
in a comment; the same argument applied here and had simply not been followed.
`start()` is now the live/network entry point and `hydrate()` is the disk-only
half, coalesced and lifecycle-guarded like `start()` already was. The provider
`create:` hydrates; `_reloadSnapshot` and `reloadFromStorage` hydrate; the borrow
picker hydrates, because it reads `current` immediately and is reachable while
offline. Only `MainScreen` goes live, gated on `!_isOffline`, with
`_handleOfflineStatusChanged` picking it up if the session later regains network —
otherwise an airplane-mode launch would never refresh Plex Home again.
Hydration still `_emit()`s, so `stream`'s replay contract holds even when the
network side never starts, which is what keeps a late listener behind a
`combineLatest` off a permanent spinner.
A response cancelled before or during body consumption completed as a successful empty body, so cancellation-triggered aggregation could overwrite valid state and a cancelled download could commit an empty file. The managed client now delivers an abort error, and a request whose own abort has fired classifies secondary teardown errors as cancelled (timeouts keep their type). A Plex server whose /hubs leg failed was also counted as succeeded when only the optional music leg returned, letting Discover replace good hubs with a music-only result.
Adding or removing a Plex Live TV favorite channel never persisted: the PUT
to epg.provider.plex.tv/settings/favoriteChannels answered 400. The dio ->
package:http migration (15b22f75) lost dio's implicit JSON content type, so
the JSON-encoded favorites list went out as text/plain and the Plex cloud
refused to parse the body. Verified live: the identical payload succeeds
with application/json and the mutation persists.
MediaServerHttpClient now defaults content-type to application/json for
structured bodies. Callers and client defaults still win (the headers map
is case-insensitive and already populated), so Jellyfin's pinned default
and the octet-stream artwork upload are unaffected; favorites is the only
Plex request with a JSON body.
close#1878
A quality switch or resumed open at a nonzero position sent offset=T on the
HLS start URL, waited for the readiness probe to touch the segment at T, and
then had mpv seek to T anyway. mpv's stream probing always reads segment zero
first, and a Plex segment request is a seek, so the transcoder was dragged
through seek(T) -> seek(0) -> seek(T) within seconds of the open. Measured
against PMS 1.43, a segment response that races such a restart can be left
open with headers sent and no data or error, and ffmpeg's HLS segment reads
have no default timeout, so playback buffered forever after the first frame
(issue #1859). Starting the session plain and letting the player's start=T
request the resume segment performs the one unavoidable transcoder seek.
The offset request parameter, the readiness probe, and the probe-only
getStatus HTTP helper are removed; live TV time-shift keeps its own offset
path. Transcode opens now also set an explicit network-timeout with
demuxer-level reconnect options: mpv's stream-layer reconnect settings never
reach ffmpeg's HLS segment fetches, so a silently hung segment response now
times out after 20s and is re-requested on a fresh connection instead of
buffering indefinitely. Verified against a live PMS (resume plays from the
requested position) and a stall harness (hung segment re-requested at 20s
with no content skip).
A Plex transcode session always starts producing at zero: the decision
request never sent offset=, so any non-zero open - resuming a
transcoded title, or switching from Direct Play to a transcoded
quality mid-playback - opened a session whose produced window begins
at the start of the file and seeked it. mpv immediately requests a
segment the transcoder has not produced, PMS answers 404 for it and
every subsequent segment, and playback buffers forever.
Send offset=<seconds> (6dp) with the decision and start request - the
view offset on initial open, the resolved resume position on every
in-place reload - so the session begins producing at the position the
player consumes first. The playlist timeline is unchanged: an offset
session's media playlist still covers the full title from segment
zero, so the player keeps opening with start: at the resume position
and in-stream seeks work as before.
Before a native player opens an offset playlist, waitForTranscodeReady
walks the master playlist, the media playlist, and the segment
containing the offset, because PMS can publish a manifest before that
segment is fetchable and mpv treats the 404 as an HLS error. The probe
is best-effort: it never fails an open, hands off immediately on HTTP
500 (on the response and exception paths alike) so the server-limit
dialog stays prompt, stops on cancellation, skips itself when the
playlist durations never reach the offset, and stays out of the
endpoint-failover cascade. In-place reloads resolve the replacement
source only after the old stop report has gone out, so Plex cannot use
that stop to terminate the replacement transcode.
close#1840
Extracts the repeated toolbar fade into a single ToolbarScrim widget, folds
duplicated request/retry handling in the media server HTTP client, and
collapses the parallel playback-source, download-manager and live TV helper
paths into shared implementations.
Introduces shared seams for paginated views, D-pad reorder, media control
routing, async singletons and the device method channel, then points the
open-coded copies at them.
Also removes unused models and duplicated provider/server plumbing, folds
the twice-implemented artifact store in the server, and factors the
repeated Flutter toolchain prologue in CI into a composite action.
Several pairs of near-identical code paths differ in one load-bearing
line. Each site now carries a comment naming the invariant that forces it
apart, backed by a characterization test so a future deduplication fails
loudly instead of silently changing behaviour.
Pinned: focusable wrapper vs. chip D-pad activation policy, profile
connection cleanup's raw-id vs. ServerId-typed server projections, live TV
tab loaders, video player display matching and playback service wiring,
track selection container ordering, tracker HTTP client status ladder, and
the MediaServerHttpClient shutdown/cancellation contract versus
ManagedHttpClient's closing guard.
New tests:
test/focus/dpad_activation_policy_test.dart
test/services/track_selection_container_ordinal_test.dart
test/services/trackers/tracker_status_ladder_test.dart
test/utils/media_server_http_client_shutdown_test.dart
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