On case-insensitive filesystems, check for re-imports more robustly to avoid duplicate database entries

[m0nkey-br4in]

I use beets and iTunes on Windows. iTunes "manages the library" and beets updates tags in files. My library is mostly tagged with Picard, so I've disabled autotag. The workflow looks like this:

• I've got a file called "04 Pasta de Coca.mp3". The title tag, naturally, reads "Pasta de Coca"
• Now I want to properly tag it and fire up beets. The EP it's on is not in MusicBrainz (actually, it is, but with a somewhat wrong title), so I tag with data from Discogs. It gets the title "Pasta De Coca" - note the case change, - and beets writes this tag to file.
• iTunes notices the change and renames the file into "04 Pasta De Coca.mp3"
• I fiddle with the library a little more; more files get renamed/moved by iTunes
• Then I decide that I need to notify beets of all those moved files and I reimport the entire directory

Now I have only one file, and two tracks with two paths, both of which beets can successfully resolve to that file, so beet update doesn't help.

Could have been worse: the first time I reimported everything I typed in the directory name as \music\ instead of \Music\, so I ended up with an entire library duplicated. Had to delete it and restart from scratch.

[sampsyo]

Hmm; sounds frustrating.

Do you have any thoughts about what we should change, specifically? For example, should update scan for case changes and update the database? Should beets check for the true case every time it tries to read a file? (That last option sounds too expensive.)

[m0nkey-br4in]

I still have a very vague idea of how exactly this needs to be implemented. As I understand it, there is only one way new paths can enter the database: via import. So I'd start with comparing incoming paths with paths already in the db in a system-appropriate way. And then I'd need a way to retroactively merge duplicate paths already in the db. Like, update would query the filesystem for the "canonical" name of a file and merge and update records. Or something like that.

[pkess]

Hey,

i tried to reproduce this and work on a solution, but i can't. Im doing following:

1. import some albums to an empty beet db
2. rename the files in beets library folder with case change
3. run beet import on the library folder

I'm getting a hint that the albums alreydy exists and everything is fine for me

[m0nkey-br4in]

You have to disable autotag, or it masks the issue. And I hope you're trying this on Windows On 2 Dec 2015 23:08, "Peter Kessen" notifications@github.com wrote:

Hey,

i tried to reproduce this and work on a solution, but i can't. Im doing following:

1. import some albums to an empty beet db
2. rename the files in beets library folder with case change
3. run beet import on the library folder

I'm getting a hint that the albums alreydy exists and everything is fine for me

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues/1704#issuecomment-161418120.

[pkess]

ok, after disabling autotag and also copy on import i can reproduce this now. I would suggest to implement a check at the import action. Beets should check if the item is already exists in library.

I'm working on that

[sampsyo]

Coming back to this ticket, it seem like at least one reasonable course of action would be to, in the importer's re-import checker, compare in a case-insensitive way on case-insensitive filesystems. How to do this efficiently, however, is still an open question.