Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Library Rescan.

[Alex Goddard <agoddard purdue edu>]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Colin Walters wrote:

> On Wed, 2003-08-20 at 23:18, Alex Goddard wrote:
> > Adding a song or two by hand isn't that hard with the current interface,
> > but adding whole directories (say I've ripped a new CD) is a pain,
> 
> Why?  "Add to Library" works on directories.

See my follow up.  The 'select nothing in the file selector' way of adding
directories is unintuitive (to me, anyway), and isn't something I checked
for until after I'd already sent the first mail.

Also, after playing with it a little, I've noticed that picking a
directory from the left pane of the file selector will not pick that
directory.  The only way for Add To Library to work on directories, is to
change to the directory you want and hit okay without having selected any
files.

This doesn't seem very intuitive, but I think this may be the file
selector's fault.  I haven't looked to be sure though.

> > There seems to be no easy way of telling Rhythmbox to rebuild the
> > database.  The best option I've found is to fire up gconf-editor, and
> > unset the "first time" flag and let Rhythmbox resan.
> 
> This is not any different from using "Add to library" again.

True.  Again, as I mentioned in the followup, selecting directories the
way you have to in the file selector never occured to me till after
mailing the list.  That's not something any other program I can think of
allows, or handles correctly.

> > I'd like to make this rescan something that is either done at startup,
> 
> Yes.  I don't see the need to add anything to the UI - it is a bug in
> Rhythmbox.

Agreed.  As I said, the behavior I wanted was already there, it just 
wasn't intuitively obvious that it was (to me, at least), and I didn't 
think to try picking directories in the file selector till after mailing 
the list.

That said, database rescanning does seem to be partially done.  Dead
entries (if I, say, rename a file) in the library are eliminated, but the
renamed file isn't picked up until I do an "Add to Library" on it.

> Implementation wise - we will probably have to also keep track of the
> directories scanned and their mtimes, and then reload from any that have
> changed on startup.

This is pretty much what I had in mind if the rescan would be automatic.  
I'm not sure how best to keep track of what directories to scan.  Maybe
keep track of what directory is given to Rhythmbox at the initial startup,
and anything that isn't somewhere in the that directory that is later
added with "Add To Library".

I'm also looking in to fixing the internet radio player so that it will
display the ID tag of whatever song is currently being streamed if it can
(see the way Totem or Xmms handle Shoutcast streams that send ID tags to
see what I mean).

-- 
Alex Goddard
agoddard at purdue.edu