Questions on use of osxphotos

[RhetTbull]

Questions from Frank, posted at Michael Tsai's blog

Hello, I used the osxphotos command line tool heavily. It is the highlander with Apple fotos database (it is great and the only one) but I have encountered some issues as well. I'd be interested if you know that experience and may have a solution to it.
First, I felt that for long commands with many options the order is important. An option at one place may not work but at another place does.
Second, using the "iterm" app which allows to save code snippets. When I save the code snippet I may or may not run. osxphotos says that the command or option was not recognized. Need to retype manually.
Third and my most urgent challenge at the moment, I cannot get the "diff command" running. I created two test foto databases, one with three fotos and one with the same three and one additional fotos. I'd had expected to see that outcome. However, when I run the command "osxphotos diff --db /Users//Pictures/Test-FotosDB/Test2.photoslibrary /Users//Pictures/Test-FotosDB/Test1.photoslibrary" the osxphotos app throws an exception "IndexError: list index out of range". Do you know if I did something wrong?

[RhetTbull]

Hello Frank. I'm the author of osxphotos. I'm glad you find the tool useful!

Quick answers here but again, it'll be much easier to help out over at the discussions page!

felt that for long commands with many options the order is important

Order of osxphotos options should not in most cases matter (in fact, I can't think of a case a the moment where order does matter). If you can post a specific example at the discussions page, I'll see what I can do to debug it.

using the "iterm" app which allows to save code snippets. When I save the code snippet I may or may not run. osxphotos says that the command or option was not recognized

I use iTerm2 as well but not the saved snippets. I'd need to see a specific example to figure out what's going on. osxphotos does have a --save-config option to save all your options to a configuration file which can then be loaded in the future with --load-config

I cannot get the "diff command" running.

The osxphotos diff command is used for reverse engineering the Photos database and for debugging. It doesn't do what I think you are asking (comparing two different Photos library). The diff command is intended for use with the osxphotos snap command which creates a snapshot of a database then, after you make changes to the database, the diff command shows what was changed. It cannot compare two completely different libraries.