Permit opening a project read-only
- Dominant language
- C++
- Stars
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- Forks
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- Avg merge
- 3d 3h
- Merged PRs (30d)
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Description
### Your idea
It would be useful to allow a project (.aup3 file) to be opened read-only, that is, for a `.aup3` file which has been marked as read-only in the filesystem to be opened without error.
### Problem to be solved
At present, when a read-only `.aup3` file is opened, Audacity produces an error ‘Project is read only (Unable to work with the blockfiles)’, and refuses to work further with the file.
I have a number of audio clips in a project resources.aup3, which are for cut-and-pasting into other projects. I've created these quite carefully, and so want to avoid accidentally changing or deleting them, so I tried making the file read-only (ie, at the filesystem level). But that makes the resources unreachable.
Perhaps it's impossible to handle a read-only file (perhaps because Audacity does some unavoidable internal bookkeeping inside the block files?). If instead there were a way of setting a flag somewhere so that Audacity would carefully avoid making substantive/non-bookkeeping changes, then that would work too. I'm just trying to avoid the consequences of fat fingers.
### Prior art
_No response_
### Additional context
I'm using Audacity 3.3.3 on macOS 13.5.1
Contributor guide
Research direction
Reproduce the failure with a filesystem read-only .aup3 on macOS 13.5.1, then trace Audacity's project-opening and blockfile handling. Done means the project opens without the current error, remains protected from substantive changes, and still supports the requested cut-and-paste use; add coverage where the existing project tests belong.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- cpp
- Domain
- desktop
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100