[digiKam-users] Sharing Collection Database

[Nick Cross]

As a followup to this having read through the mailing lists and bug database I 
found a lot of hints in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261277 and 
http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digiKam-users-DigiKam-and-multiple-computers-best-practices-td4705570.html

What I want is the ability to use the _same_ database (NOT at the same time) on 
either a Linux or Windows computer with different mount paths. I found that 
creating a 'network collection' *and* editing the database to change

"networkshareid:?mountpath=/home/rnc/Insync/name1/Pictures"
to
"networkshareid:?mountpath=/home/rnc/Insync/name1/Pictures&mountpath=D:\name1\Pictures"

seems to allow Digikam to transparently use either the Windows or Linux path 
depending on which is available.

It would be great if there was an official UI for this - or is anyone aware of any 
existing ticket ?


The only other issue is that the default Windows 10 codepage is I think 1532 
(System?) and Fedora 32 is UTF-8. While these are not identical, in my case, none 
of the database album names contain non-ascii characters. I therefore get the the 
locale warning every single time. I don't think Windows 10 officially supports 
UTF-8 so my options are limited - suggestions appreciated!

It would be great if there was a of dismissing the warning in the UI so it doesn't 
appear again. I think the related ticket is 
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382362


Thanks

Nick


On 29/07/2020 16:47, Nick Cross wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have my collection on my Linux machine that is synced via cloud storage to my 
> windows machine. I was wondering if there is any way of 'sharing' the database - 
> but given the problem that the base paths are different (even if the paths 
> _within_ the collection are not) I can't see an obvious method.
> 
> For instance - I have on Linux
> 
> /home/rnc/Insync/name1/Pictures
> /home/rnc/Insync/name2/Pictures
> /home/rnc/Insync/name2/Photographs
> 
> On Windows these appear as
> 
> D:\name1\Photographs
> D:\name2\Pictures
> D:\name2\Pictures
> 
> The problem is obviously the base paths are different. Adding them as different 
> removable collections means I get 'duplicates' within the digikam interface.
> 
> Is there any solution to this ( or an existing bug to vote upon ) ?
> 
> 
> Alternatively, what exactly is stored within the database i.e. is it - album 
> locations, tags and labels? What does similarity.db and recognition.db contain?  I 
> was wondering if it might be feasible to have 'database-win' and 'database-linux' 
> depending upon the amount of information recorded within it?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Nick