IMHO none of those hacks would be necessary with a better design.
## Situation: huge database, irrelevant copies
My photos are on a number of hard drives, that happen to get mounted (on
Linux) on various locations, sometimes in /media, sometimes through
network shares (various paths there, too). Database always showed many
irrelevant/unreachable copies corresponding to paths where the hard
drive happened to be mounted one day.
## Hack fix
Due to these many copies that grew the database content a lot and make
its content irrelevant, unusable, I totally gave up using the image
library database at all: "darktable" on my machine is a script that runs
the binary with "--library :memory:".
## Unsatisfactory fix
What saved darktable is that the database is mostly a cache for data in
xmp files. I open directories in darktable, which imports photos each
time. Running with "--library :memory:" fixed the mess, but lost all
ability to browse anything other than what was just opened.
## Suggestion: the best of both worlds
Have "volume"-based library/ies, with a marker information at the root
of the "darktable volume".
For people familiar with git, current situation in darktable is as if
git design wrote all administrative files (.git) in one central
~/.config/git because "well, you can browse all your git-managed
information in one place, and you better make sure that your actual
files always appear in the same path, else you'll be up for some
maintenance, see options/hacks 1,2,3...". Those who knew SubVersion
remember this kind of mess.
Suggested situation looks like actual git design. Administrative files
live in .git directory at *repository root*. With git you can access a
git repository through whatever path it happens to be reachable, no
constraints. It just works.
With suggested situation in darktable, when you access a photo
collection on a removable drive, or a network share, etc, darktable
would notice the volume (just like git notices the repository by looking
for a .git directory) and not create duplicates because photos have
already been identified as being of a known volume.
On the implementation side, it would mean:
(1) when creating a volume create a UUID, store it on the filesystem,
e.g. in a .darktable directory
(2) in library database store all paths as volume-UUID + filesystem path
relative to the volume root.
(3) Perhaps also store in the database the last path where each volume
was reachable (that would be a new table).
What do you think?
-- Stéphane
Le 28/03/2021 à 06.07, August Schwerdfeger a écrit :
A third option (which does not involve any hand-hacking of the
database) is to open the folders collection, right-click on the root
folder containing all the misplaced images, and click "search
filmroll...". This will bring up a dialog box in which you should
select the new location of that same folder.
--
August Schwerdfeger
aug...@schwerdfeger.name <mailto:aug...@schwerdfeger.name>
On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 6:02 PM Jean-Luc CECCOLI
<jean-luc.cecc...@wanadoo.fr <mailto:jean-luc.cecc...@wanadoo.fr>> wrote:
> Message du 27/03/21 23:36
> De : "Jean-Luc CECCOLI"
> A : darktable-user@lists.darktable.org
<mailto:darktable-user@lists.darktable.org>
> Copie à :
> Objet : re: [darktable-user] changing directory
>
> > Message du 27/03/21 17:49
> > De : "Jan Minekus"
> > A : darktable-user@lists.darktable.org
<mailto:darktable-user@lists.darktable.org>
> > Copie à :
> > Objet : [darktable-user] changing directory
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > The drive letter of my darktable folder has changed when I did
a new
> > install of my computer. All files have the same structure as
before.
> > How can I change this? I would like to keep all the changes I
made and
> > be able to go back to the original version of the files.
> >
> > In the darktablerc file I can change the entries containing
the drive
> > letter.
> > Is there another way to do this?
> > In the preferences is no entry containing the path.
> >
> > I'm using windows 10 home 64 bits and darktable 3.4.1.1
> >
> > --
> > Kind regards,
> > Jan Minekus
> >
> Hello,
>
> Better go to windows drive manager and modify the letter so it
matches the previous one.
>
> Rgrds,
>
> J.-Luc
Well, yes, of course, you can do that another way : directly
within the db - this is why I did not suggest it before.
1- First of all, backup your library.db file
2- open original library.db with any sql editor.
3- go to the sql console window
4- type the two following lines :
update film_rolls SET
folder = replace( folder, 'new_unwnated_path_to_the_files',
'old_expected_path_to_the_files');
Be aware to replace the values between single quotes by the actual
ones !
5- execute the code
But I still think acting directly on the drive letter is better
and safer.
Rgrds,
J.-Luc
____________________________________________________________________________
darktable user mailing list
to unsubscribe send a mail to
darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
<mailto:darktable-user%2bunsubscr...@lists.darktable.org>
____________________________________________________________________________
darktable user mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to
darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
--
Stéphane Gourichon
____________________________________________________________________________
darktable user mailing list
to unsubscribe send a mail to darktable-user+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
