What scenario would you accidentally update your file…I would think any changes would accidentally update your database too…I guess if you ran two different databases or computers and wanted those to be discrete databases working with the same pool of images then you might run in to an issue corrupting one database with an xmp modified from the other system…just curious. I turn it on because I have 3 PC’s so my edits are tracked in my xmp files…in fact I really make no use of the library for ratings and tags etc so I have move to using no library and just rely on the xmp files then I have no update issues to worry about …although this won’t work for everyone
What scenario would you accidentally update your file
You try a fancy new image viewer that, by default, start recognising faces or analysing sharpness and exposure to automatically find ‘good’ shots, but it has a bug / does not understand the darktable-specific data in the XMP file and thus corrupts it.
I would think any changes would accidentally update your database too
The chances of others software touching library.db (tucked away in an application-specific directory) is way smaller than touching files of a commonly used sidecar format that are stored next to the images.
I admit the chances are small, of course, and that your use case is perfectly valid. I wrote that
“Look for updated XMP files on startup” is only required if you modify the XMP files (e.g. from another darktable instance
Which is exactly your use case. So if you need this feature, by all means, turn it on; if you don’t need it (‘although this won’t work for everyone’), I think it makes sense to keep the default and handle the database as a master, XMP as output (or input when importing, but only then).
Gottcha…I was not thinking about other software in the mix only DT ….