Windows Shortcuts in movie folders no longer working

[pünktchen 1258]

They don't work on network locations.

And what about hardlinks?

[dcook 265]

How was allowing EMBY to recognize and follow Windows Shortcuts hurting something else? Or "a lot of things" as you said?

 

Looks like another example of useful features being removed with no thought of the consequences.

 

Luke, you should take a look at how Linux software works, when they remove or depreciate a command, it is not simply removed right away, when you run the command it will give you a message saying that its depreciated and will not be supported in future version, which then gives the administrator time to update their software to use the new command.

 

To simply remove functionality overnight is not right

 

 

 

 

It was hurting a lot of things.

 

Won't junction points do the same thing for you at the OS level?

[Luke 37094]

Luke, you should take a look at how Linux software works, when they remove or depreciate a command, it is not simply removed right away, when you run the command it will give you a message saying that its depreciated and will not be supported in future version, which then gives the administrator time to update their software to use the new command.

 

In a sense we already did that, because while this was a more commonly used MB2 feature, I said right from the get-go with MB3 that I didn't like magic hidden features and it was going to be relegated to undocumented and unsupported. If you search hard enough I'm sure you can find my comments going back a few years. I never intended for shortcuts to be a fully supported, first-class feature with Emby Server because if it can't be configured in the UI then very few people will ever understand it.

 

It is never coming back in the form that you know it, however, the end-goal of this is to be able to mix and match folders without respect to physical structure, and that is something that other users across the community have asked for, and therefore we would like to bring it back in a new way that can be managed in the web interface.

[Schar 4]

I've tried soft links on Linux folders and it resulted in items appearing twice in libraries. Haven't tried junctions in Windows but suspect that the result would be the same, the OS sees the files as just being where the link is.

 

@@Luke - I still think that something like http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/32987-server-add-filterable-library-custom-views/ would solve the problem.

 

Above I had reduced the concept to libraries as a whole; but if I could create a "view" that was configurable as to what it shows via meta data (tags, ratings, paths, artists, whatever is coded - not really relevant but tags seems an easy first cut as it allows complete flexibility if the users are willing to invest the time in curating their libraries) and then incorporate that view into any library (or have a library that is just a set of views) then I could create libraries with arbitrary content. In my head I was relating them to a SQL view - something that gives the application its configured view of the data without it having to know what is under the hood. Then the default libraries are just views that include everything, or have no filter.

 

Happy to explore this more and talk either in forum or out - or spike a prototype for you.

 

Cheers

[ebr 14921]

How was allowing EMBY to recognize and follow Windows Shortcuts hurting something else? Or "a lot of things" as you said?

 

Looks like another example of useful features being removed with no thought of the consequences.

 

We give great thought to and have to weigh many things for every change/addition we make.

 

To answer your question directly, many people's performance problems were solved by eliminating this feature as well as everything that Luke mentioned.

[Schar 4]

@@ebr - I fully understand and support that. Nothing worse that a CIFS scan timing out looking for shares that are not there

[Mustang Dave 5]

Luke... ebr....

 

Any eta for the new shortcut options?

[colchar 10]

I have been able to solve this problem for myself. Because I am using a Windows server accessing all its folders on a NAS, I wasn't able to use windows Symbolic Links or Junction Points as they required local directories. But I have been able to use a Linux Symbolic link instead and they work perfectly. Emby recognises them completely the same as any other folder or directory and so they show in all the multiple places I have set them to.

[Schar 4]

That does work for creating many distinct views of media.

 

However I found that Emby treats them as different versions of the same show, so things turn up twice in libraries if the links include the same file twice (since they have a separate physical path from Windows' point of view). Also messes with watched etc.

 

Warning - don't delete the linked directory from Windows - the files are trashed and not the link. Speaking from experience....

[colchar 10]

That does work for creating many distinct views of media.

 

However I found that Emby treats them as different versions of the same show, so things turn up twice in libraries if the links include the same file twice (since they have a separate physical path from Windows' point of view). Also messes with watched etc.

 

Warning - don't delete the linked directory from Windows - the files are trashed and not the link. Speaking from experience....

 

Yes it does, I have some instances of Movies or episodes showing up 3 times even though they are in completely different locations. There must be a way to produce a Distinct list in the directory being viewed?