Update only deletions?

[Juddium]

Is there a way to use the update command to only look for file deletions? I have many files that I don't write metadata to, and every time I run an update because some files were deleted it goes through all those again. For the most part I only need update to detect file deletions or moves.

[jackwilsdon]

beet update should only be reading files that have been modified:

beets/beets/ui/commands.py

Lines 1660 to 1667 in 65d78cb

	# Did the item change since last checked?
	if item.current_mtime() <= item.mtime:
	log.debug(
	"skipping {0} because mtime is up to date ({1})",
	displayable_path(item.path),
	item.mtime,
	)
	continue

Can you post the output of running update with beet -vvv update? Is it the same files being updated every time?

[Juddium]

Part of it is it's the same files being updated - changes don't seem to be actually written? The other part is I will run mbsync after update to repopulate the tags in the db.
I've attached the output of beet -vvv update.
beetupdate.txt

[jackwilsdon]

Update doesn't support only matching deletions at the moment, but it might be nice to have a --only-delete flag to avoid making any other changes. It should be easy to add - just skipping the rest of this loop if the flag is set:

beets/beets/ui/commands.py

Lines 1650 to 1704 in 65d78cb

	for item in items:
	# Item deleted?
	if not item.path or not os.path.exists(syspath(item.path)):
	ui.print_(format(item))
	ui.print_(ui.colorize("text_error", " deleted"))
	if not pretend:
	item.remove(True)
	affected_albums.add(item.album_id)
	continue
	# Did the item change since last checked?
	if item.current_mtime() <= item.mtime:
	log.debug(
	"skipping {0} because mtime is up to date ({1})",
	displayable_path(item.path),
	item.mtime,
	)
	continue
	# Read new data.
	try:
	item.read()
	except library.ReadError as exc:
	log.error(
	"error reading {0}: {1}", displayable_path(item.path), exc
	)
	continue
	# Special-case album artist when it matches track artist. (Hacky
	# but necessary for preserving album-level metadata for non-
	# autotagged imports.)
	if not item.albumartist:
	old_item = lib.get_item(item.id)
	if old_item.albumartist == old_item.artist == item.artist:
	item.albumartist = old_item.albumartist
	item._dirty.discard("albumartist")
	# Check for and display changes.
	changed = ui.show_model_changes(item, fields=item_fields)
	# Save changes.
	if not pretend:
	if changed:
	# Move the item if it's in the library.
	if move and lib.directory in ancestry(item.path):
	item.move(store=False)
	item.store(fields=item_fields)
	affected_albums.add(item.album_id)
	else:
	# The file's mtime was different, but there were no
	# changes to the metadata. Store the new mtime,
	# which is set in the call to read(), so we don't
	# check this again in the future.
	item.store(fields=item_fields)

As an alternative, you could use a shell script like this to only run update on deleted items:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

QUERY=()
while read -r LINE; do
	FILE_ID="${LINE%%$'\t'*}"
	FILE_PATH="${LINE#*$'\t'}"
	if ! [ -f "$FILE_PATH" ]; then
		# Add deleted items to query.
		QUERY+=("id:$FILE_ID" ",")
	fi
done < <(beet ls -f $'$id\t$path')
if [ ${#QUERY[@]} -gt 0 ]; then
	unset "QUERY[-1]" # Remove trailing comma.
	beet -vvv update --pretend "${QUERY[@]}"
else
	echo "Nothing to do."
fi

Remove --pretend once you're happy with what it's doing 😁

[mmmeon]

beet update -F deleted detects deleted files.
think any file not found at the expected path is considered deleted, which would include files moved updating the database.