Re: Refresh thumbnails: Request for Help

[Christoph Moench-Tegeder <cmt burggraben net>]

## Asheesh Laroia (asheesh asheesh org):

> >That's not possible (at least, not the way you did it). F-spot
> >references all files by their full paths (there is no easy other,
> >as perhaps by filename only; some cameras wrap their filenames after
> >1000 images, some people use multiple cameras using the same naming
> >scheme, and so on).
> inode numbers might be useful as an alternative (as well as obviously useful 
> for finding duplicates that are hard links of each other or duplicates that 
> result from symlink weirdness).

Sounds good, but there are some problems: restoring from backup, or
moving the photos to a larger disk. It might help for finding hardlinked
duplicated, but then an "normal user" would not mess with hardlinks in
his photo collection. So it's perhaps only symlinked directorys, but
that's wht realpath(3) is for and does not require extra care in case
of cross-device symlinks.

> Really, I just wish that the filesystem 
> contained a mapping of sha1_hash=>filename so that F-spot could just ask,
> "Hey, where'd the file with sha1_hash xxx go?" and get a proper answer.

Even that requires extra care in case you have multiple copies of
a file.

For now, I believe that the filename in combination with the "Photos"
folder is the best solution to that problem. Just tell the user, he
should always ket the application copy the photos for him and he
should not mess with his "Photos" folder. Anything else, and he is
on his own.
Of course you could try sucking all images into a huge database,
but such a database could be somewhat slow, and in addition you will
be really screwed if your database gets damaged (a simple directory
is much more easily recovered).

Regards,
Christoph

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