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Choose where your records are kept

LoupeKind keeps your verdicts, ratings, edits and reviews in one database on this computer, in ~/.loupekind unless you choose another folder. Your photos stay where they are. You can choose the folder from loupekind init or the studio until the database holds a shoot. After that, move it by hand.

Give the folder's full path, such as /Users/you/LoupeKind or ~/LoupeKind. It must be on this computer: LoupeKind refuses a network drive, because the database's locking doesn't work across one, and it refuses a folder it can't write to. A folder that doesn't exist yet is made once you've chosen it.

If LoupeKind had already made an empty database in the old folder, choosing another one removes it. It holds nothing, so nothing is lost. If something else has it open, it's left where it is.

When LOUPEKIND_DATABASE_PATH is set, it decides where the database goes, so it can't be chosen here: init says where it is and doesn't ask. Unset it first.

From a terminal

loupekind init

It asks whether to keep your records somewhere other than the folder they're set to now, which is ~/.loupekind unless you've set database.path. Answer no and nothing changes. Answer yes and it asks for the folder, and asks again if that folder can't be used. The choice is saved as database.path in your configuration.

Once the database holds a shoot, init says where it is and doesn't ask.

From the studio

While the database holds no shoots, the library shows where your records are kept. Choose another folder opens the folder picker, and Keep it hides the card. Leaving the card alone keeps the default. Once the card is gone, or the database holds a shoot, the library still says which folder your records are in.

By hand, once it holds shoots

LoupeKind doesn't move a database that holds shoots yet. To move one yourself:

  1. Close the studio, and wait for any command that's running to finish.
  2. Copy loupekind.db to the new folder. Copy loupekind.db-wal and loupekind.db-shm with it if they're there.

  3. Set database.path to the new file:

    loupekind config set database.path /path/to/folder/loupekind.db

  4. Run loupekind doctor to check it reads the database at its new place. Then remove the old files.

When a command makes the database

If you open a shoot before choosing, with ingest or any other command, LoupeKind makes the database in the default folder and prints one line saying where. That shoot is then in it, so moving it is by hand, as above.