#3 Old Rhythmbox trashes newer RhythmDB w/o asking

[John Croisant]

While trying to investigate a playback issue (which is irrelevant to this report, except as backstory), I downgraded my installation of Rhythmbox from 0.11.5 to 0.11.2, to test if the issue would occur with the older version.

When I started up Rhythmbox 0.11.2, I was presented with this message:

Could not load the music database

The database was created by a later version of rhythmbox.  This version of rhythmbox cannot read the database.

\[X Close\]

Behind that message box, I could see Rhythmbox scanning my music and rebuilding the database again. I dismissed the message and closed Rhythmbox.

Unfortunately for me, closing Rhythmbox triggered it to overwrite my rhythmdb.xml and playlists.xml -- thereby permanently trashing 2+ years worth of music ratings, playlists, radio station lists, podcast subscriptions, etc. in one stroke.

I hope you can understand how that could be rather upsetting.

After shouting obscenities and punching a pillow for a while to vent my anger, I decided to file this report so that this infuriating design flaw can be corrected in future versions.

Here, as I see it, are the problems that need to be fixed:

1. At no point did Rhythmbox inform me of the potential for data loss. (True, it said it couldn't read the database -- but it didn't say it was going to delete it and replace it with a new one.)

2. Even if it had informed me of this, there was no button or option to close without overwriting the database.

3. Rhythmbox did not create a backup of the database, even though it knew that the data would be lost next time it saved.

If these three things -- information, consent, backup -- had been respected, I wouldn't be sitting here trying to remember which songs I had put in each playlist, what radio stations I had, etc.

Obviously, old versions can't be retroactively fixed, but future versions of Rhythmbox should be more careful about this.