set_track_fields in addition to set_fields

[bertbesser]

Hi there and thx 4 beets,

my goal is to add certain fields at track level automatically during import. E.g. a comment like 'managed by the magnificent beets tool'. 😅 Those fields should be written to files.

There is a similar feature, the set_fields importer option and the accompanying --set CLI option. Hoever, these work at album level. I would like to implement set_track_fields resp. --set-track with analogous semantics at the track level. From quite some discussions out on the internet, I noticed that this is not only my wish, but also the desire of other people.

Are there concerns/objections/blockers for the additional set_track_fields or does it have a good chance to be merged? Asking b/c I'd rather save the precious time if the feature is not welcome.

Example config and CLI call:

...
import:
  set_fields:
    comments: 'managed by the magnificent beets tool'
    ...
  set_track_fields:
    comments: 'managed by the magnificent beets tool'
    ...
...

%> beet import --set-track=comments='managed by the magnificent beets tool' ...

The suggestion to implement an additional option set_track_fields instead of adding a flag to set_fields to switch between 'album mode' and 'track mode' is for two reasons:

• backwards compatibility and
• fine grained control over the track-level and album-level fields of each track.

Let me know what you think.

Regards and thx again,
bb

[sampsyo]

Hi there! This does make sense, but I want to point out a little bit of backstory: this has come up in #1881 (comment), at which point @wisp3rwind's follow-up pointed to an alternative: #2988 can obviate the need for some cases where you want to set item-level attributes on all of an album's tracks.

I think that doesn't exactly work for your use case because you actually want to set on-disk (e.g., ID3) tags—you don't want these for queries.

I think we probably should do something about this, but I'm not certain about the set_track_fields design. The main reason is that set_fields does already set track fields—it only does it in singleton import mode. So maybe we want to just automatically set all track-level fields on albums in album mode, or maybe we want that behavior to be behind a (boolean) flag.

[bertbesser]

Hi,

yes, I checked the difference between singleton and album mode of set_fields, ie. that they set fields on the track-level resp. album-level.

I was also thinking about a boolean flag to decide whether fields are set on just one level or on both album-level and track-level. For backwards compatibility the flag cannot be a child of set_fields and hence would be a sibling of set_fields. That would imply some cross-refs in the docs and possibly some unclear config files out there (where set_fields and the flag are not next to each other).

Cheers

[bertbesser]

So maybe we want to just automatically set all track-level fields on albums in album mode.

This would actually be my favorite: Just set fields on both album and all tracks by default automatically. My only fear is that this might break some users' setups.

[sampsyo]

It's worth a shot, certainly! Care to open a pull request?

[bertbesser]

Sure. I think I will find some time over the weekend. Will ref from here.

[bertbesser]

Found some time earlier. Please see #3927.