Feature request - Option to save playlists using relative paths

[anderspitman]

I keep my music folder synced between several different devices, which all have different system directory structures, so playlists don't work if they use absolute paths. Any chance of adding an option to save playlists with relative paths?

[Oleksiy-Yakovenko]

I understand what the problem is, and kinda feel the pain (I had the same problem recently, and had to hack some code to re-save playlists with different paths), but I'm not sure that writing relative paths is the right solution.

[anderspitman]

I definitely don't think it should only do relative paths, or even that it should be the default, just that the option is available.

[dnisyd]

Is this still a thing here? I want to create playlists for my portable audio player, but I have to use an extra script to get rid of the absolute path.

[Oleksiy-Yakovenko]

It is still not implemented, and won't be in 1.8.0 release. We're busy polishing the code for the 1.8 release at the moment, so the code is in the feature freeze state.

[stroobandt]

As a new user (version 1.8.4), I am actually looking for this same very basic thing… relative playlist paths for use between different devices or even when accessing the same server device with DLNA on OSMC or Kodi.

It would be kind of a pity If one would need to write a sed shell script to clean out the absolute paths.

[Oleksiy-Yakovenko]

It is not a simple thing to fix. Deadbeef playlist code can't handle relative paths, and I don't see this changing any time soon.

[stroobandt]

OK, Deadbeef may fail at playing relative playlists.
This is not my personal experience, BTW.

Nonetheless, the creation of relative playlists may be offered for use with other devices e.g. MP3-players.
You can always write a little warning next to the option about Deadbeef support.

For those interested, the following sed command will remove both *nix and Windows absolute paths:

sed -Ei 's/^\/.*\/|^.*\\//' playlist.m3u

This can even be further automated with an accompanying find command, as explained here.

[Oleksiy-Yakovenko]

@stroobandt I guess there was some level of confusion in the communication. When I said that deadbeef can't handle relative paths -- I was talking about the deadbeef native playlist (dbpl). Now I'm realizing, that the OP probably meant the export/import playlists, like M3U. They can have relative paths, and it should be straight-forward to implement the exporting with relative paths too.