[Feature Request] Manual scanner should have "Overwrite existing playlist" to on by default

[i30817]

The reason this should be on by default is that rescans in the manage playlist menu otherwise need clean playlist before or after to get rid of any stale files from deletions or renames, leading to a iteration checking the files anyway.

If the user could assume that by default the playlist was always recreated, they wouldn't need to bother with clean by habit.

Very very few times do you want a playlist not to clean missing entries (the cases I can think is when the games are temporarily unavailable, a external disk for example), and in those cases you won't be hitting rescan on purpose and would hit clean by habit after anyway (removing all entries anyway)

When you need appending to the playlist ofc you can turn it off, which is why I'm not suggesting removing the setting (and clean).

Ideally a scan could be a single pass in all cases but I understand why this is isn't always possible (or very complicated. I myself had to make a script to create and merge multiple dat files to get a whdload scan using a dat to be a single pass so I could always overwrite and never have to remember clean just for that playlist).

[odditude42]

imho, options that cause loss of data should not be enabled by default.

casual users who use a manual scan might not remember what options they selected previously and inadvertently omit content.

i regularly rescan directories to add new content, and i certainly don't want any manually-adjusted entries (e.g. replacement of multiple .cue entries with a single .m3u) to need to be recreated.

[i30817]

That is not data loss.

Replacement of multiple cues by m3u does not get nuked if you rescan a scan searching for m3u (rescan only works with manual scans iirc) and remove missing files. It just means that you don't get entries which don't exist by default after a scan when you renamed a file, or clrmamepro did, a very common use case (id argue the most common for hitting rescan).

Anyway I got into a discussion about this in discord and got convinced that a better way to achieve this same thing was a default of overwrite to off but with "verify existing entries to on too"

Because that won't nuke previously selected specific cores for a single game, which is actual data loss.

There is a case where this can cause data loss but it's unavoidable because the feature is about rescanning and the user should be aware that what they're rescanning manually (unlike all those emulators which do this automatically like eden - those are the ones which shouldn't delete game entries by default). If the game drive is unavailable at the moment this kind of rescan would delete the entries. That could be fixed by just rescanning again when you have it connected again, no big deal imo.

[i30817]

I'd go so far as to argue that overwrite playlist and validate existing entries settings should be hidden from the user after selecting a new default that deletes missing games entries.

"Should you delete missing games entries?” Is a question with a answer and it is "Yes."