SUMMARY Elisa will not index into a symbolic link inside the music directory. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Create music directory /home/blah/music 2. Create symbolic link inside this directory to actual music directory 3. Point Elisa at the music directory (containing the symbolic link) 4. Re-scan library. OBSERVED RESULT No albums. EXPECTED RESULT Lots of albums. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.2 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION In my case the symbolic link points to an autofs mount (music is actually located on a server), however I doubt this changes things. The autofs mount is definitely mounted, as I am using it with another player currently. When browsing for a music folder, it is impossible to select the symbolic link in the browser, the music folder setup above shows as empty.
I'm pretty sure this is a Baloo limitation. Does it work if you use the "Scan the filesystem directly" option in Elisa's settings window and then restart the app?
Ah. Indeed, you win todays prize as you are indeed correct - "Scan the filesystem directly" does find the files. Is this, then a bug, or just a known limitation of baloo? It could possibly stand at least some documentation of some kind.
It's a limitation of the Baloo file indexer, yeah. I can add some inline documentation.
Note that you can continue to use the native file indexer if you add the location that the symlink points to in the list of music locations in the settings window.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/elisa/-/merge_requests/341
Git commit 4d3a765ee607b4a9425bcfc7fff3ae4db425a90d by Nate Graham. Committed on 23/03/2022 at 15:42. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'. Warn that the fast native indexer doesn't follow symlinks When using the Baloo-powered fast native indexer, symbolic links are not followed, due to a longstanding design decision in Baloo itself. This means that if, for example, you have ~/Music confiured as the only music location, and within that folder is a symbolic link pointing to ~/otherMusicLocation, none of the music there will be visible. The user will have to manually add ~/otherMusicLocation to the list of music locations as well. This is not at all obvious, and it's not going to change in Baloo anytime soon as it is a design decision. So let's tell the user about it in the config dialog so they're aware. FIXED-IN: 22.08 M +27 -16 src/qml/SettingsForm.qml https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/elisa/commit/4d3a765ee607b4a9425bcfc7fff3ae4db425a90d