Wouldn't it be nice if emplode/emptool could be configured not to skip duplicates if they are in different playlists, but to make a link (as opposed to uploading actuall MP3 duplicate)? That way those of us who would like their PC-based MP3 collection directory structure to mimic empeg playlist structure could achieve this using Unix hard links (as long as tune names are same).

Emptool already does this, as long as the duplicates are both uploaded at the same time. It does this by checking all the files it's uploading for symbolic links -- and, if it finds two symbolic links to the same file, adding a reference to the original FID rather than a new FID.

For instance, I load up my test player by using emptool's "upload -p -r" on three directories: one a link forest under "Artist", one a link forest under "Decades" (then years), and the third a link forest under "Favourites". All three link forests are automatically generated -- the first two from running id3info on everything under /mp3audio, the third by examining mserv's database for "good" and "superb" tags.

Peter

PS. There's currently a limitation in emptool that it only spots this sort of thing if the leafname is a symlink. Symlinking to a directory will cause it to upload duplicates of all the files in that directory. This behaviour would be only slightly painful to fix if people wanted it though.