Why so many *arr services? Why not 1 service that works with all media types? - eviltoast

I am almost done building my first self hosted streambox through Docker. That’s a total of 16 instances, each fulfilling 1 specific role.

As I’m new to the *arr world, could you please help me understand why it is standard to deploy multiple *arr services for each media type (ex: readarr1 for books + readarr2 for audiobooks) instead of using 1 that does multiple media types?

Thank you.

  • SciPiTie @iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
    72·
    1 year ago

    There is literally not one singular(!) arr that does what you’re claiming, at least that I’m aware of. The indexing is done by a different thing than the tracking and the downloading.

    That’s why you end up with 16 of them like OP after all…

    • jcg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, sonarr and radarr support some indexers but I ended up just setting up Jackett. They both use those indexers to search, but in different ways. They also don’t do the file downloading, your separate download client does that. They do both track future releases and rename files, but the way that works conceptually for movies and TV shows is pretty different since Movies are singular pieces of media while shows are broken up into seasons and episodes. They work with different data structures and so have to parse and present in different ways.