Feature Request: Export Beets Library to a Zip File

[laker-93]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

I often need to export my Beets library to a single file for backup or sharing purposes. Currently, there is no direct way to achieve this within Beets.

Describe the solution you'd like

I propose adding an option to the beet move command that allows exporting the library to a zip file at a specified location. Specifically, adding a -z option that can be used in conjunction with -c to copy the output to the specified zip file name.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Currently, I manually copy the root directory of my library to a temporary directory and then use external tools to compress it into a zip file. This process is cumbersome and could be streamlined within Beets.

Example usage:

beet move -cz /path/to/export.zip
This command would copy the library to /path/to/export and then compress it into /path/to/export.zip.

Possible Implementation

Modify the beet move command to accept a -z option.
Implement the functionality to compress the copied files into a zip file at the specified location.
This feature would greatly enhance the usability of Beets for users who need to archive or share their music collections easily.

Thank you for considering this feature request.

As an additional bonus, I'd like some way to monitor beet's progress in creating the zip but that can be done in a follow up PR.

[DjSlash]

I tried to find the benefit of having such functionality in beets. Making something like this is not easy done right. It sounds simple, but implies a lot (at least in my head).

Many archiving tools allows to use a certain directory and put the resulting archive in another place. Which would make it an easy oneliner to execute. These tools also offer a wide range of other options that would be more superior and fitting to others needs. What makes such a tool cumbersome in usage, which would make it better if it were implemented in beets?

The only thing I can think of is that you could use queries to have a subset of your library. But that's also something that could be piped into another command.

[laker-93]

I personally use this for regular back ups of my library and being easily able to export my collection on to a different machine. At the moment I have a custom solution that works, but I wanted to see the appetite for upstreaming to beets. As you highlighted, the use case of using queries to archive a subset is also of use. Additionally, I use beets within a docker container and use volumes for storing the music files. As Beets currently has the ability to copy my library to a different location (using 'beets move -c') I can use this command but then have to do additional work to then zip this file again. Ideally the operation to copy the library in to a zip can be done with one iteration, rather than two (copy and then zip). If beets were to have this API, it would mean beets could handle all the write operations necessary to perform a zipped export.

Python's ZipFile module has a decent cross platform API that could be leveraged here. Out of interest, what's the complexity here that you're worried about?