[Digikam-users] Separate instances of digikam, different album trees, same machine?

[Claude Gélinas]

What I would like to see is to be able to open two differents albums at
the same time in the same DK. Is it possible ? It would allow me to
compare photo in the two album to see if they are the same or if some
are missing etc.

> Hmm, I had never thought of this until I read this thread, but would 
> assume it would work:
> Can two users (e.g. userA and userB) be simultaneously running their 
> own, unique, instances of digikam?
> 
> On 06/05/2012 06:29 PM, Jean-François Rabasse wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 5 Jun 2012, John Stumbles wrote:
> >
> >> Is it possible to run more than one instance of digikam at the
> >> same time on a machine, operating on different album trees and
> >> with different databases?
> >> ...
> >> I can't see, in digikam's help manual, any way to invoke it with a 
> >> command line parameter to specify where to find its config files
> >> or anything like that so I guess the answer is probably that it is
> >> not possible, but I thought I'd ask anyway!
> >
> > Hello John,
> >
> > It's possible if you're not reluctant to a bit of shell scripting.
> > (Or copy/paste my example below.)
> > I do the same thing and have two « DK environments », with
> > different DB and folders trees.
> >
> > DK can be run with a command line option specifying the directory 
> > which hosts the database. But DK also uses a configuration file and 
> > this one is
> > unique, so tricking this requires some preconfiguration.
> >
> > 1. I have my standard (main) DK configuration set.
> >
> > 2. I wrote a shell script to run my auxiliary DK configuration
> >    (It's named dkaux and is somewhere in my PATH, e.g. $HOME/bin)
> >
> > This script does the following :
> > -- 
> > #!/bin/bash
> > #
> >
> > # Define aux base directory
> > DBASE=/somewhere/on/disk
> >
> > # Save current RC configuration file
> > DCONF=${HOME}/.kde4/share/config/digikamrc
> > test -f ${DCONF} && mv ${DCONF} ${DCONF}.bak
> >
> > # Install aux RC file if exists
> > test -f ${DCONF}.aux && mv ${DCONF}.aux ${DCONF}
> >
> > # Start DK on aux directory (and wait, no trailing &)
> > digikam --database-directory ${DBASE} 2> /dev/null
> >
> > # When done, restore RC configuration to standard
> > mv ${DCONF} ${DCONF}.aux
> > test -f ${DCONF}.bak && mv ${DCONF}.bak ${DCONF}
> >
> > # That's all !
> > -- 
> >
> > Well, it works well (at least for me:-), and it's possible to
> > extend the idea and write 2, 3 or more starting scripts, dkaux1,
> > dkaux2, etc., with different base directories and RC files.
> >
> > The major problem is that you can't start at the same time two DK 
> > instances,
> > and get two DK main windows, the main tree and the aux tree.
> > No magic, as DK uses a single fixed RC configuration file the above
> > can't be reentrant.
> >
> > Hope this could help,
> > Jean-François
> >
> >
> > PS: wish list: a great idea would be that future versions of DK
> > could also
> > accept the RC file on command line. That would allow starting with:
> >  digikam --database-directory /...
> > --configuration-file /....digikamrc and managing different systems
> > with shell aliases.
> >
> >
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