Sonntag, 13. Mai 2012

MediaScanner deletes jpg and gif files

Wow Issue 3692 for is just about one of the most horrid bugs I have seen in desktop computing. See comment 26 for a breakdown on how it happened.

But then I would not consider it a programming bug. It is more a design bug: The very idea of scanning the entire SD card for pictures to add them to a central database and display them in the gallery is wrong.

  1. Not all pictures are meant to be displayed by the gallery app. (For example cover art for eBooks and music albums or browser caches)
  2. It does not scale well. Modern sd cards can now exceed 64GB. Can you even imagine how long it takes to scan one of those once they are full?
  3. On some devices sd-cards can be removed quite easily.
  4. On some devices there is more then one sd-cards slot.
  5. It is difficult to keep the database is sync with the content. For example: Even after adding «.nomedia» to your eBook collection folder the cover art stays in the gallery. A reboot might be needed. And sometimes event that does not help.
  6. You can get all sorts of horrid bugs. For example when the database sync physically deletes the files from the exclude list.

Don't get me wrong: I properly done and carefully thought out this feature could be helpfully for the less technically minded users. But this takes time. A and a lot of thinking. As it is it is a bloody bodge job.

Just in case you wonder: No I did not loose any files due to this bug (at least I never noticed). But other did. Especially comment 72 is disturbing.

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