[Digikam-users] Digikam file management

[Markus Spring]

Geert Janssens schrieb:
> On Thursday 30 July 2009, Markus Spring wrote:
>> obviously the image editor writes a new file, removes the original one and
>> renames the new file to the original name. So at least in this respect we
>> would not have any difficulties. For other operations this has to be
>> tested.
>>
> This is interesting, but non-consistent. If the file being edited is 
> hardlinked by other files, changing the original file should reflect this 
> change in all files. That's how I would expect a link to behave. In fact, I 
> tend to consider this a bug, given the link vs copy metaphors being used. 
> 
This probably can considered as a bug, but I see it as a widely used behaviour 
pattern, used to avoid data loss in the most critical phase of program execution 
of writing modified content.
When I write utilities for my own usage, I do often resort to this solution. 
When the program fails or is killed in the moment of writing, the old file is 
left intact and the residues of the incompletely written new file can be 
discarded later. So I would not see this as a bug but as a valuable feature, 
especially when dealing with image files of which many of the users don't make 
backups first.

> Also this is not only about the image editor. You can change your hardlinked 
> files with other editors, like the Gimp, Krita,... All these editors should 
> exhibit the same behavior with hardlinked files or we're up for some major 
> confusion.
just checked the gimp: it indeed writes the file directly. So there definitely 
is confusion ahead.

Markus