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f-spot 0.5.0.1 – Remember the Rubik’s cube

2 October, 2008 (22:52) | Export, extensions, releases

F-Spot 0.5.0 is out since long time, right now. I know I should have posted something before, but… I’m often lazy!
No big news happened in SVN since last post, when I talked about the big features being committed in.
But there’s a (sadly negative) noticeable thing: DPAP support has been excluded from release, not yet being considered user ready.
On the other hand, F-Spot 0.5.0’s week release marathon, namely F-Spot-athon, produced a lot of last-time fixes and inclusions:

As I already wrote, F-Spot 0.5.0 includes duplicate detection: this means that you won’t accidentally import the same picture twice! During the process the algorithm creates an unique md5 hash for your image data only (that means: not including exif/xmp data), and compares it to the ones present in db. If an equal hash exists, and the duplicate detection was enabled, the already present picture will be ignored.

As you might have guessed this requires a database upgrade, and a time expensive job of calculating md5 for your existing images. This may result in F-Spot taking some high CPU and disk usage after upgrade, until hashing is finished. This job is scheduled in background, and shouldn’t harm the user experience too much. And don’t worry, you can close F-Spot at any time you wish, the job will resume next time from where it left!

F-Spot 0.5.0.1 should be included in all the main distributions getting out in the next months, that is Fedora 9, Mandriva 2009.0, OpenSUSE 11.1, and Ubuntu 8.10.

Enjoy!

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Comments

Comment from Wouter
Time: 2 October 2008, 23:43

Ubuntu is at 0.4.4 and I don’t think the chances are high that they will be updating it anymore so close to release…

Comment from David Nielsen
Time: 3 October 2008, 01:55

For Fedora this might be hard as you still carry a lot of bundled pieces of software like mono-addin, the packaging guidelines say we should (text is likely going to be changed to must) use system packages instead for amongst other things security reasons. We already carry a patch for the 4.4 f-spot for mono-addins to be converted to system library use. I will beg, plead and bribe in the hope that you consider making 0 prebundled libraries your goal for upcoming f-spot versions, it really makes the distributors job a lot easier and more managemable from a support prespective.

F-spot is an amazing application, I love it to bits and I am currently using the 0.5.0.1 release on this machine, every moment a pleasurable one from a user prespective. Fast, delightful and easy.

Comment from Maxxer
Time: 3 October 2008, 08:01

The bundled libraries are there for a reason: in mono-addins there are some modified strings, in case of flickrnet F-Spot supports Zooomr export, which the original library doesn’t. As soon as those “issues” are fixed there is no reason to keep them bundled!

Comment from Morten Siebuhr
Time: 3 October 2008, 18:19

From the Ubuntu bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/f-spot/+bug/271895), it is still uncertain if F-Spot 0.5.? will end up in Ubuntu 8.10.

Comment from grigio
Time: 4 October 2008, 01:44

I like F-Spot, but is possible to automatically discover the new photos without importing them every time? Maybe with inotify is possible to monitor a specific directory for changes..

Comment from Gerald
Time: 4 October 2008, 03:51

“During the process the algorithm creates an unique md5 hash for your image data only (that means: not including exif/xmp data), and compares it to the ones present in db.”

Do you know a standalone program that does this: finding duplicates ignoring metadata?

Comment from Maxxer
Time: 4 October 2008, 09:20

Grigio: bug #312613 is for you.
Gerald: sorry, no, I don’t know any…

Comment from grigio
Time: 4 October 2008, 15:13

@Maxxer: I will monitor that bug, thanks

Comment from true_human
Time: 18 June 2009, 05:13

Can I just say that this is the most awesome feature of any photo software ever. This feature alone makes F-Spot the killer photo app. I have just spent about a week trying to merge my photo collections with my wife’s and this is by far and away the best way to do it.

On a side note, Gerald, during my ‘merging’ efforts, I wrote a python script that will do what you want – compare two image md5sums using only the image data. Its not especially nice, but it does the job (or did for me anyway). Email me if you want it, I don’t want to just put it online as it’s rather dangerous if misused.

You also might want to look at jhead – this is the command line app I used in my script.

F-Spot is a great tool, keep up the good work. Seriously, its about 90% of the way to ultimate perfection – when a few of the bigger bugs are fixed it will categorically be the best photo manager out there.

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