gmusicbrowser lost saved lists

[markling]

gmusicbrowser lost my saved lists.

I had 14 lists, with about 150+ songs at a guess.

The lists were drawn from my music library, which is stored on an external disk. I have been using them for a couple of months. Then I started gmusicbrowswer without remembering to mount the external disk first. gmusicbrowser took that to mean the music library was no longer there. It cleared its library - an error that can be corrected easily. But it also cleared the saved lists. I would rather it had not done that.

The lists were filed painstakingly. I had filed songs according to what key they were in. I worked the classification out myself over long hours of loving work at my musical instrument. The lists formed a library of songs for practicing. Now I shall have to start over.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: gmusicbrowser 1.1.9-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-29.42-generic 3.8.13.5
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8.3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Sep 3 21:25:56 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-11-28 (279 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.1)
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gmusicbrowser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-05-14 (112 days ago)

[Quentin Sculo (squentin)]

Thanks for reporting this. When songs are removed, most informations are kept for a number of sessions, and restored if you re-add the songs. But the songs are indeed removed definitely from saved lists. It hadn't occurred to me, probably because I rarely use lists. I will think about this, but it's not easily fixable, so I don't know what I will do about it or when.

The good news is that there are backups in ~/.config/gmusicbrowser/. Almost everything is saved in the gmbrc file, and there should be 5 backups of it from the last 5 days/sessions.

To avoid that in the future, you can of course disable the auto-removing of songs in the preferences.
You could also use labels instead of saved lists, unless you need to keep an order, or to have a song present more than once in a list. Though there are some things that may not be as convenient with labels as they are with saved lists (you can't add a label by drag and drop for example) I will try to improve this in the future.

[markling (markling)]

Quentin, this is most decent of you. It is a breath of fresh air to be informed how a bug report has been received and what might and might not realistically be done about it. Your workaround is much appreciated. The backup is brilliant, and a relief.

[markling (markling)]

And yes, it was the drag and drop and quick creation of new lists that led me to use them. I had looked quickly and seen no obvious way to add a new tag. Somehow I just ended up using a list. It was quick and convenient.

[markling (markling)]

You may be interested in knowing the same thing happens with Quod Libet.

And specifically, the same thing happened to me when using Quod Libet:

 1) music on external, USB HDD;
 2) Playlist made with Quod Libet library of this disk;
 3) Over time...
4). One time opened Quod Libet before connected external HDD, QL erased the playlists as it erased the library.

So the offending routine, just to spell it out: check library - the device where it normally resides isn't there? Okay, erase the library then and any user content built from this library.

Three things to say about this.

1. This is likely a routine shared by multiple players - would someone be kind enough to identify what it is and assign this bug report accordingly?

2. The error seems to have arisen from a mistake in the program, er, logic. I.e. it might be assumed that if the library has been deleted then the player should remove that library's tracks from its records. But it does not similarly stand to reason that if the device is not there then the library has been deleted and is no longer needed.

3. The programmes fail to respect the emotional investment users make in their playlists. It's not just time. It's not just effort. It is often an activity conducted for the sake of someone or something. Whatever the reason, it is usually something of emotional value. It is therefore something that a programme should take particular care over.

[Quentin Sculo (squentin)]

1. I can assure you that it is not caused by a shared routine. All the code implicated in gmb has been written by me, and it's not the kind of code that is sharable, even if quodlibet and gmb where using the same language, which they are not.

2. I cannot speak for quod libet, but as far as gmusicbrowser is concerned, there are 2 distinct problems.
a) a potential bug when saving or loading playlists, they are currently saved as series of numbers referring to their position in the library, it seems there have been bugs in the past causing synchronization problem with these numbers, I do not know if it still happen with current versions.
b) the fact that songs removed from library are removed from saved lists. In gmusicbrowser, songs data are kept for some time after a song is removed from the library, so that if the song is re-added data like labels or rating are not lost. You bug report made me aware that their belonging to a saved list was not lost. It is a tricky problem, and I'm still not sure what I'll do about it.
You can mitigate it somewhat in gmb by un-checking the "Automatically remove current song if not found" and the "Check for updated/deleted songs on startup" in the library tab. And then only "check for songs" or "re-read tags" when you know your device is connected.

3. I can assure you I care very much about all the user's data. In gmb there are 6 complete backups in the ~/.config/gmusicbrowser/, one of the most recent save, the others from each of the last 5 days where gmb has been used.
But bugs happen, and some things are sometime hard to do.

Though in your case, it seems you don't really want lists (that have an order) and simply using labels would work much better, the only problem is that the way to add labels is not as intuitive or convenient as it should be. If you have suggestions on how would be the best way for you to add labels, feel free to share them. Note that in gmb, if you are willing to modify layouts, you can have buttons that add/remove/toggle a specific label to the current song, or checkboxes to change the labels of the current song. I think I'll also add dropping songs on a label in the label list as a way to add labels.

[markling (markling)]

Dear Quentin

Subsequent to these reports distribution upgrades and/or bug infestations forcing reinstallation led me to lose my gmb application data.

I'm looking frantically through backups but am facing the possibility that it is lost. Quodlibet stopped working altogether on Xubuntu 14.04. It seems to have installed Audacious. I will get gmb again and address these points you raised, if they are still relevant:

a) Will look.
b) This is the way to solve the problem, thank you. I did learn to do this (the hard way!).

3. I've no doubt you do. If only my own backups had been as reliable as gmb's. I've got two more places to look. Fingers crossed.

Regarding adding labels, it seemed to me at one point the best solution was to add additional information as tags. Quodlibet seemed to handle this fairly well at one point. tags e.g. for "key" or "pianist". But it simplified its interface and I lost the feature. I could also no be sure that my bespoke tags would ever be compatible with any other s/w. It seemed not.

I shall let you know if I have anything useful to say about labels. What you say sounds interesting.

[markling (markling)]

FYI, installed gmusicbrowser again after some time away (v 1.1.12+ds0-1).

It's looking very nice indeed.

I'll report any helpful bugs or suggestions in the appropriate place, which I presume is there (http://gmusicbrowser.org/) rather than here?

[Quentin Sculo (squentin)]

Sorry for not replying sooner.
The forum on gmusicbrowser.org is the best place for suggestions, I also prefer getting bug reports on the forum first, and if the bug is not fixed/clarified rapidly you are welcome to report them on github (https://github.com/squentin/gmusicbrowser/issues which I badly need to clean up).
Note that I sometimes take a long time to reply, but I always read everything.

About 'tags e.g. for "key" or "pianist"' you are welcome to send me an example file by email, gmb doesn't yet support custom tags (but it does support custom fields not written in the file), though it is planned. If the tags are relatively standard, I can probably easily add them, probably disabled by default.
If you want to discuss it I suggest creating a thread on the forum, as it's really off topic here.