Darktable looses all edits on crash?

Software darktable
1

I’ve noticed that every time Darktable crashes it also looses all the edits made in the latest active editing session.
Is there anything that could be done about that behavior? Could we have a ctrl+s shortcut or have Darktable automatically save the changes?

There have been images that I have been working for an hour or two and lost everything because of an ungraceful app shutdown.

2

Until a suitable, more elegant solution is provided you could use this workaround:

While in darkroom: ctrl-c then ctrl-v

When you copy the history stack (ctrl-c) and then paste it in place (ctrl-v) darktable will write it to disk. At least on Linux it does…

1 Like
3

Nice! :smiley:

Does this mean this is a known issue and is on the radar or should I open an issue?

4

Press L to go to the ligthttable, D to go back to the darkroom. The information is saved every time you leave the darkroom

1 Like
5

I don’t know if it is. Best way to find out is to look at the issues already present on GitHub.

6

It can be tracked here:

I’ve proposed a possible GUI solution too. Ofc, if it can be done so that everything is saved without the need for user awareness and input like CTRL+S, then this GUI is not necessary.

rect988
rect9882450×4438 1.22 MB

1 Like
7

Would it not be that if you compress the stack it would write or update the xmp file…I always thought it did…maybe I was mistaken…I will confirm but I see activity when I do this and my xmp changes I think so then if you are set to look for new xmp files when you restart it might catch that. I will have to run through this to check @KristijanZic

1 Like
8

I just gave that a try and made darktable crash. All up to the moment you press compress history stack is saved, all after is gone. So that would work too.

But all these options, mine, yours and the one Guillermo came up with are workarounds in my opinion. A dedicated action, one that @KristijanZic asked for via GitHub, is the correct approach to this.

1 Like
9

ctrl-c ctrl-v is the easiest one. what I did up to that was space backspace to briefly change active image so that history gets written. But all of these are just workarounds.

It is also not documented as an “official” workaround so it would take a user quite a few lost image edits and quite a few lost hours before he even starts trying to find a solution or a workaround.
I imagine, ordinary user would just trow their PC at the wall or out the window before they’d go testing and poking the software.