"Organize files" dialog fail

[Mark Kretschmann]

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Maximilian Kossick
<maximilian.kossick at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Myriam Schweingruber
> <schweingruber at pharma-traduction.ch> wrote:
>> This is now about the 6th user that accuses Amarok to be responsible
>> for loosing files. Two even blatantly lied and pretended they did not
>> uses the "Organize files" dialog and lost files (one of them found
>> strange folders named A, B, C afterwards, but "I didn't use that
>> option, it was done automatically" *sigh*).
>>
>> Now here is my proposition:
>>
>> * Either we remove this option altogether, since it seems to be too
>> easy to discover for uninformed users and, frankly, the dialog is far
>> from clear, no warnings that files are gonna be moved and it can screw
>> up big time,.
>> * or we work on this with more priority. It moves files without
>> warnings, no warning neither if the destination doesn't have enough
>> space to hold the files or if the users has no permission to write
>> into. This is really serious and two users lost 50 Gb and 80 Gb of
>> data each.
>
> Does this still occur in 2.2? IIRC a bug ragarding this issue was
> marked as fixed recently (before 2.2)
>
>> Of course we can repeat ourselves and tell them "Why did you do
>> this?", but I consider this dialog an ugly bug and, frankly, who can
>> use this feature really in the current state? There is not even a
>> possibility to move files elsewhere than one of the collection folders
>> (requested quite often btw.), it renames files without proper warning
>> and even removes file extensions which is a complete failure. Don't
>> forget that most users are neither experts nor advanced users and we
>> should prevent them from doing silly mistakes, since it will fall back
>> on us anyway. Their accusations can be found with Google all over and
>> "Amarok lost 80 Gb of data" and "Amarok screwed up my collection" is
>> not what we want to read. We have had enough bad publicity so far.
>>
>> For more information, please see also the following forum posts
>> (search results):
>>
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=79596&hilit=lost+files+Amarok
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=73611&hilit=lost+files+Amarok
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=82628&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=81056&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=78832&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=74520&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=74128&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=74657&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=73460&hilit=organize+files
>> * http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=74624&hilit=organize+files
>>
>>
>> and here are the relevant bug reports:
>>
>> * https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126283
>
> If I'm reading this report correctly Amarok will just not start if the
> DB is not writable. And I do not get how this is related to the
> OrganizeFiles dialog. Any query will fail in the described situation.
>
>> * https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=180376
>
> Minor bug
>
>> * https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204807
>
> if the compilations end up stored as V/Various Artists/<Album name>
> this does not seem to be a bug at all

Well, Teo has just fixed one crash in the code (BUG 169684). While we
were looking at OrganizeCollectionDialog.cpp, we both noticed that the
code is quite a mess. Apparently it was ported from 1.x in a hurry,
with many FIXMEs and TODOs in there.

So I wouldn't really be surprised if it contained more bugs. Teo
suggested that this file needs a full rewrite, as the logic is really
screwed up.

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
www.kde.org - amarok.kde.org