[LAD] samples/symlinks/sessions

[James Morris]

On 15/07/12 David Robillard <d at drobilla.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 15:57 +0100, James Morris wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> My sampler app has Non Session Mangement implemented but is currently
>> still referring to external files by their original path.
>> 
>> I want to use the symlink method as discussed fairly extensively here
>> but I'd like to know if there is any recommended strategy for naming
>> the symlink of a sample.
>> 
>> It could so happen that as far as the filesystem is concerned the
>> only discerning uniqueness between two samples is in the path (ie
>> kit1/snare1.wav and kit2/snare1.wav).
>> 
>> 
>> I've come up with three possible solutions to this (in my current
>> order of preference):
>> 
>> 
>> 1) symlink-to-sample created in a subdir named using a hash* of the
>> full path to external file
>> 
>> 2) painstakingly re-create the full path within the session dir and
>> add the symlink into that.
>> 
>> 3) some horrible text manipulation of the full path (ie replace /
>> with _) that is bound to fail.
>> 
>> 
>> * J. Liles mentioned SHA1 here:
>>   http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lad/2012/3/30/189343
>> 
>> Are there other/better options or disagreements about (1) being a
>> good choice over the other options I've presented?
>
>I just used the original name of the file, with a number added for
>uniqueness if necessary (which is very seldom the case).  It works and
>is much more human-friendly and straightforward than the above options.
>A "make this path unique by sticking a number on the end of it"
>function turns out to be pretty useful anyway.
>
>Of course, you need to actually check for existence of files to create
>it, which might be a problem in some cases (though not any I've
>encountered), but anything that assumes a mapping based on the current
>path is a unique identifier for a particular file's contents is bound
>to fail anyway.


Well I spent what time I had free over the weekend implementing the
first option. I did take a look beforehand to see what NON-Daw did
(it does what you recommend), but disliked how it didn't check for an
existing symlink pointing to the file it was creating a new symlink for.

I decided checking existence of one directory to be easier than
examing each symlink in a directory to see where it points. However I'd
not be surprised if these benefits were outweighed by other costs.


james.

>
>-dr
>