Bugs & Thoughts about Amarok 1.4.4

[Rich]

Niklas Nylund wrote:
> On Jan 30, 2007, at 10:15 PM, Rich wrote:
...
>>> 1) Items are not removed from playlist when removed from the  
>>> collection
>> they should be marked as unavailable (greyed out). is that happening ?
>>
> No, they don't get greyed out in the playlist tab. Adding the  
> playlist after removing a file results gives me a song with title,  
> length and a question mark under bitrate. Double clicking it makes it  
> greyed out in the main playlist.

i'm slightly confused. what exactly are we talking about ? removing 
files while they are in the playlist ? loading a manual playlist from 
playlist browser with <something> deleted ?

there have been some fixes for denoting unavailable files (especially 
together with a dynamic playlists), so maybe this already is resolved.

>>> 4) I got an album in my collection folder that isn't picked up by the
>>> collection scanner. Restarting Amarok or rescanning the collection
>>> doesn't help. How do I debug this?
>> what filesystem ? does amarok pick it up if you 'touch' it ? what
>> filetype are the files within ?
> 
> Odd, it picked it up after I touched all of the files. Anyway I'd say  
> this is a bug since a "normal user" (whatever that is ;-) probably  
> has no idea of what touch is and how to use it.

probably mtime was not updated correctly. was it simply ignored or were 
there some changes that were not noticed ? how were the changes performed ?

> The files are on a Reiser partition and all files are Mp3s.
> 
> I am curios, does Amarok use polling or inotify to get filesystem  
> events?

there were attempts to use inotify, but i haven't seen much about this 
lately (i think there were some problems, so it was disabled).
currently amarok is looking for modified directories, if you have 
'change watching' enabled.
if not, you can initiate collection update manually whenever you want 
(this also will be easier to do in 1.4.5) - this probably is better for 
people whose collection rarely changes or is located on a remote server.

>>> 5) It would be nice if Amarok saved the main playlist and other
>>> options (especially "Group by" setting in collection browser) every
>>> now and then. I never close Amarok, I use it until it crashes and
>>> thus also loses my playlist.
>> main playlist can be automatically saved whenever a track advances  
>> by a
>> script now. that is not automated because of performance reasons  
>> (might
>> change if playlists are moved into the db)
>> ...
> 
> Well, every say 10:th minute or so couldn't hurt the performance that  
> bad.

i'd guess this would not be changed until playlists are stored in the db :)
as markey noted, ideally no application would crash, but we all know 
they do, so i understand the desire to save data more often (for 
example, amarok would die when another critical component like xine or 
alsa would crash - which seems to happen way too often...).

if you are interested, i have a one-liner that would save current 
playlist whenever track advances :)
i never got to expanding it for other situations, but it covers my needs 
very well.

> Niklas Nylund
-- 
  Rich