CLI Export

[pallid sage]

Hello, I tried the CLI Export on Windows 10 by downloading the .exe
I noticed

• I had to relaunch the export when connection was lost (server could not be reached error), could this be retried automatically?
• at somepoint the export stopped with some error because there was no more space on my C disk : it's not the disk on which I was exporting but it was because of temp files "error downloading file 22819190: write C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\ente-download\22819190". I deleted the temp files, relaunched the export and it worked. But after the export was completed there were still 40GB temp files I had to delete manually.
• I checked if everything was exported and there were some files missing : I noticed these are files which have same name as others in the same album, but some other cases there was no problem they were exported with "_1" added to the filename, but some other were not exported. With the desktop app no problem, (1) is added to all these filenames
• On some files I noticed the date is not good, these are files which I changed the date in Ente. When downloading these files from the app the date (date the photo was taken shown in windows) is ok, it's also ok when exporting with the desktop app. (I saw changing date in ente doesn't change the "creationdate" shown in ente EXIF viewer don't know if it's related)
• Are there some logs? because I could'nt see all lines up to top in the cmd windows because it was too much
• the documentation could be improved for instance to let the user know that everything is exported (other users photos and albums and our photos in other users albums)

So for now the desktop export works better (with the problem that at the end it says that there are still files to export : the files you put in other user album, so if you're not aware of the issue you think there is a problem).
The cli could be useful to export the data for family members. What could be interesting could be to choose if other users albums are export (and other users photos in our albums/our photos in other user album).
But in the end I'm just expecting something simple and reliable to keep my own copy of photos without worrying if everything is ok ! I'm more than very happy with ente, using it with my wife and some family members (sharing my plan) but I have to say that concerning export, everytime there is a new version I start again, check if everything is ok and with so many photos it takes hours to export etc

[turbid ridge]

Pinging @olive mulch here

[olive mulch]

Hello,
Thank for your the feedback, really appreciate it.

1. Retry: The current export only tries to download a file 3 times (with a gap of 5 seconds). If it fails, we stop the export. We can definitely improve it by waiting for 10m before trying again automatically. Will make this change.

2. Yes, my bad. We are not clearing the data from the temp directory. I wanted to optimize some parts here, but never go around that. Will fix it in the next version.

3. This is very concerning, I will have a look at this. Can you confirm that number of file count which you see in the app is different from the number of exported files? Please check the .meta folder in case you have live photos

4. The cli doesn't modify the original file in anyway. This is intentional. We are integrate exiftool integration, that would let us easily modify exif time, captions, tags and any other relevant metadata. The issue with integrating any native library (apart from exiftool ) is that it will always be lagging behind in terms of feature completion and support for various formats (including videos).

5. We are not writting back to disk as of now. Can add support for it in the future as needed. Just relying on console output, which if you wish, can be pipped to a file. ./ente-cli.exe export foo.exe > "C:\ente-cli.txt" 2>&1

6. Agree. Afaik, our current desktop app doesn't export albums owned by others and CLI exports everything by default. Eventually, we hope to extend the CLI and expose params that would let users customise the behaviour according to their requirement.

Please note, ente-cli is still in beta and we are looking for community feedback to wiggle out issues/bugs. For your primary export tool, please continue using the desktop app.

[pallid sage]

Thanks

for the missing files I check again, the meta folder also, and they are missing, but I found something : in the same album they are some files with same name that are exported (with "_1" added to the second file) and other are missing. I looked the cmd output (I saved the output i could see/scrool in the cmd in a txt file) and all files are been treated (even those missing) with no errors, but I saw the difference between them missing and those not. If there is "name.jpg" and "name.jpg" then it works and exports "name.jpg" and "name_1.jpg" but if it is "name.jpg" and "name.JPG" then only one is exported, i think one is overwriting the other or not exported.

[olive mulch]

but if it is "name.jpg" and "name.JPG" then only one is exported, i think one is overwriting the other or not exported.
Ahh, understood. We haven't taken care of this case. Thank you for pointing it out. We will fix it in the next release.