Scanning report goes over 100%

[zp]

I open Elisa and entered the Music section. The Scanning widget reported that it was scanning 20000+% of my music

[Guillaume Emont (guijemont)]

I've experienced this under linux, with a music directory containing mostly symlinks to places where the music actually is.

[Benjamin Kampmann (lightyear)]

I explained this issue would happen at the time I was told to implement this feature. There is even a FIXME around it. To explain again why this happens:

To calculate the amount of files we are scanning we use a very simple os.walk. This os.walk is the fastest way to find all the files but it has two major problems: it is *not* following any symlinks (I am not sure for hardlinks) on linux and no .LNK-Files on Windows (which is the system for file system linking there). So files inside these directories are not counted. But atm the media scanner is using LocalResource and LocalResource is a bit more intelligent than os.walk. It figures out if something is a link (sym- or hardlinks on Linux and .LNK-Files on Windows) and acts accordingly. That means that the media scanner is entering such links if they are directories.

Because of that the media scanner estimation is likely to be wrong if there are any kind of links inside the media directories. There are three ways to fix this:
 - deactivate the link following during scan (not wanted)
 - follow links in counting (would slow down the estimating)
 - rewrite the whole part to use in any case the same system for estimating AND scanning (so that there would always be a consistency of the way the file system is build into a tree)

The last one is the only proper fix to this issue but I am not sure about how much time that would take.

[O2 (m-ottosson)]

I am using version 0.5.23 and is having the same same problem with scanning over 100%. After reading the posting from Benjamin above I checked if I have any links. The result is that I have no links at all in my music folders still it is scanning over 100%. Please see attcahed screenshot

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Are you sure you don't have any links? On windows by default the music library includes the "My Music" folder which, if I'm not wrong, contains a shortcut to "Shared Music" or something of that kind. That would explain the scanning going over 100%. You can remove the default music folder from your library by going to Music/Music Library/Folders/Add folders.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Note: python 2.6 added the followlinks parameter to the os.walk function (http://www.python.org/doc/2.6/library/os.html#os.walk). I reckon it would be pretty easy to copy its implementation.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Of the possible solutions listed by Benjamin at comment #3, the first one is not acceptable, nor is the third one for performance reasons. I therefore went for implementing a custom walk that follows symlinks (as done in python 2.6) and resolves windows shortcuts. See attached branch.
A merge request is pending.