I’ve been playing around with the idea for a new podcast along with a couple of other Rustaceans recently, and a little while back we decided to go ahead and record an episode on the newly release Rust 1.36.0 (stay tuned!). Yesterday, I spent some time trying to get all the “stuff” set up to actually release the podcast, and it resulted in perhaps the most frustrating few tech-related hours I’ve had in a few years.

I decided I didn’t want anything fancy; I’d just upload the recorded episode to Backblaze B2, where I already have an account for backup purposes, and then use GitHub Pages for a super-barebones website and an RSS feed for the podcast episodes. Seems simple enough, right? I just needed to figure out the feed stuff, and then I’d be good to go.

So, as any lazy programmer does, I started by searching for “jekyll podcast rss”, since GitHub pages is basically Jekyll. And lo and behold, “Podcasting with Jekyll in 4 Steps” pops up. Great! I’ll be done in no time. Seems easy enough. Steps 1 and 2 I’ve already completed. Copy-paste the RSS template, and it seems to generate correctly, great!

Now just to double check, let’s run it through a validator. “itunes podcast rss validator” brings up Cast Feed Validator, podbase, and FEED validator. I guess let’s try all three. They all complain about slightly different things, like the <atom::link> tag not pointing to the right URL, so I do some tweaking to make things work on GitHub Pages. Oh, yeah, and apparently iTunes only accepts certain HTTPS certificates, and the one used by GitHub Pages isn’t one of them. I guess I’ll have to proxy through CloudFlare or something.

This process does cause me to read through the XML more carefully though, and I see a number of other things that seem odd. First, there are several calls to xml_escape , which seems weird given the existence of CDATA. Second, <description> , <itunes:subtitle> , and <itunes:summary> seem very overlapping – how do they differ? It’s time to look for the spec!

iTunes seems to be the primary standard-setter for podcast RSS feeds, so I quickly end up at Apple’s Podcast feed sample. Except this also has a number of tags my feed does not, such as <itunes:type> and <itunes:title> (how does it differ from <title> ?). I also see that they are nesting something called <content:encoded> inside of <description> , and also using CDATA. Their value in <itunes:duration> is in seconds, not as HH:MM:SS. I try to match my XML to theirs — it now fails validation. Okay… Is there a full specification somewhere?

I find Apple’s Podcast best practices, which goes into some more details about the difference between different tags (like summary and description). They say that <content::encoded> should be separate from <description> , in direct contradiction of the feed example. They also recommend <itunes:type> , except that tag is rejected by the validator as not part of the schema.

I find Apple’s Podcaster’s guide to RSS. This has an official-looking table with “required tags” and “recommended tags”. Finally! Except here, for <description> , the example shows <content:encoded> ? The “best practices” document also said that <content:encoded> could be used at “episode-level only”, whereas this document seems to say that all description elements should have it? At the bottom, it says “only use markup or HTML contained within <content:encoded> tags inside of <description> tags”, reiterating that one should be inside the other, even though this seems contrary to the RSS spec (see also StackOverflow). The spec also says that if <content:encoded> is present, <description> should be used as a summary (so what is <itunes:summary> for?).

This document also specifies that <itunes:title> should be used for episode titles, not <title> , whereas the same is not true for the channel title. At least it clarifies that <itunes:duration> can take “different duration formats”, so that (maybe) explains it being given in both seconds and HH:MM:SS format. Oh, and <itunes:keywords> is also apparently not a thing. And when it says that you can use false or true for things like <itunes:explicit> , that’s a lie – you must use no or yes .

Okay, so that is a hot mess. Let’s see what schema Google recommends for its podcast feeds. Some initial Googling leads us to this page, which has a link to the XSD schema file and a Google Support answer. The latter does give an outline of the required tags, but it seems to mostly be “do what iTunes requires and we’ll figure it out”. They provide their own googleplay namespace if you need to, say, use a different e-mail address on Google. Unfortunately, their “Sample podcast RSS feed” doesn’t validate, because:

Use of unknown namespace: http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0

Great, so the googleplay namespace doesn’t work, so you can’t use a different e-mail address for iTunes and Google Play. Fantastic.

Okay, whatever, let’s at least just see whether iTunes will accept what I now have. I’m just going to sign up for an Apple ID real quick. Just have to fill out this little form (which requires JavaScript, because of course it does) and then verify my e-mail. Easy enough.

Your account cannot be created at this time.

Err, what? Okay, different e-mail address?

Your account cannot be created at this time.

Err, okay, different browser?

Your account cannot be created at this time.

Different browser, e-mail address, and over VPN?

Your account cannot be created at this time.

I guess it’s time to contact Apple support. My only option is to either have them call me or schedule a call for later. No idea why online support isn’t a thing, but okay. I put in my phone number and the cryptic error message and wait. Two minutes later, I get a text from Google Fi that I have a missed call. Apparently Apple Support tried to call me and it went to voicemail. Huh, weird. I was by my phone the whole time and it never rang. I get an e-mail saying they failed to reach me and will try again. I get another missed call from voicemail. Apple gives up.

After digging through my calls list, I notice that the missed calls show the incoming calls from Apple with the “Blocked spam caller” icon. Uh-oh. I guess Google Fi marks Apple Support as spam? Great. I unmark as spam and file another support ticket. The call goes through immediately.

Okay, so I’m speaking to Porschia. Seems friendly enough. I tell them my issue again and my e-mail address. They disappear for a while, occasionally checking back that it’ll just be a bit longer. After about 10 minutes of mostly silence, they tell me to try again. It works! I ask why. “Your e-mail had to be whitelisted”. What?! Apparently Apple doesn’t like people with e-mail addresses under custom domains signing up for an Apple ID? How bizarre.

Well, I have an Apple ID account now, so onwards! The Interwebs tell me that I should now go to Podcasts Connect, so I do.

Podcasts Connect requires an iTunes Store account.

Err… And that’s different from an Apple ID? Apparently a magic “blessing” happens to your Apple account the first time you log in through an Apple product (either a device or iTunes). And that blessing is needed to publish a podcast. I guess that’s next. But… I’m on Linux, and I own no Apple devices. There is quite literally no way for me to log into an Apple product. Unless…

A while back, Microsoft released Windows virtual machine images to allow you to test stuff in older versions of Internet Explorer. They’re free to download, but expire after 90 days. That’s fine. I just need to log in to iTunes. So, I download a Windows VM, install iTunes on there, log in with my new Apple ID, give my address, and click continue expecting that there’s some additional process I have to go through involving a credit card and whatnot to get my account blessed.

You have been logged in to iTunes.

So, let me get this straight. I had to download a 6GB Windows VM + 200MB of iTunes just so I could fill in my address? There really wasn’t any way I could have done this through the web Apple? At least I’m not the only one who has commented on this being stupid in the past.

Anyway, with my special iTunes Store account in hand, I now navigate back to Podcasts Connect, and am met with a mostly blank page with a single text input field named “RSS Feed URL”. I give it what it wants, and it spins for a while. Then

Failed Validation

No further explanation. It just.. Failed. Back to the other validators I guess. The unrecognized Google Play schema definition was the only reported error, so I removed that. An what do you know, that was it. iTunes validated my XML! Now let’s just double-check the details it has extracted. Huh, that’s weird. The episode listing shows a blank string under “Description” for the included episode. After some digging, it turns out that the podcast episode “Description” in this list is, wait for it… <itunes:subtitle> . Because it’d be silly if it was any of the three other tags that are meant to be descriptions.

But hey, at least now I think I’m about ready to publish this thing. Cue record scratch…