digiKam in a dual-boot system?

[Carsten Fuchs]

Hi Christoph,

I too checked this out a bit more, and I think that the problem can be generalized as 
follows:

	"The file system paths of the digiKam database files and the album roots occasionally 
change (optionally with the relative path from the database files to the album roots not 
changing). How can this be addressed?"

Examples include dual-boot systems, multiple installations (e.g. copying a backup to a 
different computer that is used only for viewing the albums) or simply moving the album 
root directories in the file system.

I found that with digiKam 5.1, file ~/.config/digikamrc has the paths to the database 
files: Setting the paths appropriately solves the half of the problem with moved 
database file locations.

Am 19.08.2016 um 16:55 schrieb Christoph Huckle:
> The biggest question there is where do you store your pictures? NAS? Separate partition?

That's a good one. I have not yet tried this out, but maybe the second half of the 
problem is fixed if the album roots are on an USB or NAS drive -- anything that keeps 
the album paths or UUIDs constant.

As I use different harddisks (e.g. in the backup "view only" system) on different 
platforms (Windows, Linux), file system paths to the same album roots are often 
different. (Maybe there is a clever trick with symlinks or file:// URI schemes, but I'm 
not aware of any.)

> There is no feature for this, but you can add multiple paths in the Digikam Database
> manually and then it (somehow) finds the correct one.

Yes, that sounds promising – but digiKam identifies albums by their ID in table 
"AlbumRoots", doesn't it? The ID at least (along with the custom "identifier") would be 
unique, even if "label" and "specific path" were kept the same.

I wonder if there is indeed a mechanism that identifies multiple entries in table 
AlbumRoots as referring to the same album?

Best regards,
Carsten