Musly executable has no flag to remove a track

[Bevinsky]

The command line program doesn't have a flag to remove an entry from the database, even though the library seemingly has a function for it. This feels like an unnecessary limitation.

[f0k]

Thanks for the suggestion. The command line client was mostly meant for demo purposes, where you usually won't need to remove tracks. We could add such a feature though. Would you like to implement it and send a pull request?
The flag to use would probably be -r as a pendant to -a. A small design question is whether this should accept single file names only, or also directories -- what would be your use case?

[Bevinsky]

Well, the systems I'm trying to interface with are mostly in Python (but also in PHP) and I don't really want to have to write bindings to a C++ library for them. Much easier to use the standalone program for that. The program is a bit lacking in some places though, like in this case with deletion.

I would really prefer it if it was possible to add/delete/query songs based on an external, arbitrary ID and associate an ID with a path when adding songs. As I see it the program can't really do that today; you have to pass a filename/path and it will always use that as the identifier. That's a bit outside the scope of this issue though, so I guess what I need is just a way to remove entries based on what was passed when a file was added.

I'm not entirely sure how the musly program keeps track of what files it has today, though. Is the path you pass in actually used as the identifier, or does musly resolve the path to an absolute one to catch duplicates before doing any processing? For example, if I add a path with a double slash, it will keep that double slash when I ask for similar results. That leads me to believe that musly is using the actual path string as a unique identifier.

I'm just thinking out loud, I suppose. I definitely feel like there are some ways to improve the command line interface, though.

[f0k]

I don't really want to have to write bindings to a C++ library for them

For Python you can just use ctypes, works pretty well. Unfortunately I only did that for an internal version of the library, not for musly, otherwise I'd just share it. But it took less than a day to write. I don't know what options exist in PHP.

I would really prefer it if it was possible to add/delete/query songs based on an external, arbitrary ID and associate an ID with a path when adding songs.

Well, that's what the library does -- I also think that's outside the scope of the command line client, this was mostly meant for demonstrating the library and doing some quick tests, not for production. A more viable option for production without binding to the library would be a daemon that can be queried via ZMQ. I'm not sure how far we should go with extending the command line client. (Of course, in theory, it could just do both.)

I'm not entirely sure how the musly program keeps track of what files it has today, though. Is the path you pass in actually used as the identifier [...]

Yes, it's all kept very simple. It uses the paths as passed on the command line.

[Bevinsky]

For Python you can just use ctypes, works pretty well.

Oh, that looks promising! For some reason I just assumed the interface to libmusly was C++ as well. Makes it easier for sure.

I might use the library straight then instead. I don't really need this feature in that case.