Copy/Move books between libraries using command line tools

[jameszh]

Hi All,

I have multiple libraries, lots of the books are duplicate, what I want is to consolidate them into one library. Of course I could have merged them into one using gui, and then manually removing duplicate will be tedious.

My question is if it's possible to use command line tools to accomplish this, so the process can be done by a script.


Any hint is appreciated.

TIA,
James

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by jameszh

I have multiple libraries, lots of the books are duplicate, what I want is to consolidate them into one library. Of course I could have merged them into one using gui, and then manually removing duplicate will be tedious.

The GUI has an automerge function under Preferences - Import/Export - Adding. It was originally designed for importing books, but was later added for Copy to Library. If that option is turned on during Copy to Library it will automerge duplicates it can identify into a single book in the destination library.

Read the tooltips for what it identifies as a "duplicate" book.

Note that the latest release has three alternative automerge options, but those options for the option do not apply during Copy to Library. They apply only during import (Adding).

[jameszh]

Just tried automerge, it did pretty good job, thanks! -James

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by jameszh

Just tried automerge, it did pretty good job, thanks! -James

I'm glad automerge for "Copy to Library" is being used and worked for you. Automerge was written to simplify my bulk adding of books to Calibre. I was actually very surprised when someone posted a "bug" report that "Automerge isn't working for Copy to Library!" It had never occurred to me that it should apply to CTL. (When I wrote automerge, CTL hadn't yet been written anyway).

After some thought, however, it sort of made sense that it would be useful for CTL to do the automerge you just found to be useful, and I added it to the CTL code. Nonetheless, I've always been sort of worried that some day I'll get another bug report saying "Automerge screwed up my Copy to Library!" from someone who thinks Copy should mean "copy" not merge.