XMP sidecar files randomly written without content

[Jason Boxman]

Hi.

I'm using 5.8.0 on OS X 10.11.6. Preferences > Metadata > Sidecars has
Read/Write to sidecar enabled and "Write to XMP sidecar only" selected.
(All JPG files are chmod a=r)

I find that when modifying a group of selected photos by adding a tag, some
subset of the files will have XMP files written that resemble the following:

$ cat ./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-152749.jpg.xmp
<?xpacket begin="" id="W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d"?>
$

I can't reliably predict which files will have this issue, but it does
happen consistently to at least one file in the group. If I identify each
associated image, then click Item > Write Metadata to Image, it writes out
a proper XMP file with data from the digiKam database.

If instead I select a group of images and click Item > Write Metadata to
Selected Images, a possibly overlapping, but different set of images will
have empty XMP files.

Is there something I can do to change this behavior?

An example. After using Write Metadata to Selected Images:

find . -type f -size -100c | grep jboxman
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-152749.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-152851.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-152933.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-153059.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-153123.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-153652.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-154635.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-154701.jpg.xmp

I do it a second time and the situation improves to this:

find . -type f -size -100c | grep jboxman
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-155109.jpg.xmp

I do it a third time and end up with this:

find . -type f -size -100c | grep jboxman
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-153912.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-154701.jpg.xmp
./photographers/jboxman/2010/07/02/20100702-163025.jpg.xmp

Very confusing behavior.

-- 
Jason Boxman
jasonb at edseek.com | 407-212-7877 (mobile)
in: http://linkedin.com/in/jboxman
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