Make ExifTool overwrite_original is transactional and atomic?

Question

I'm using ExifTool to add keywords to a file. I do this in batch, spawning ExifTool as a child process from my app.

exiftool  -keywords+="courgettes"  -keywords+="edible gardening"  -keywords+="vegetables"  -keywords+="Glasshouse"  -keywords+="Greenhouse"  -overwrite_original "/pictures/garden/P8151927.JPG"

However, it seems that with -overwrite_original the process isn't 100% transactional and atomic; occasionally it fails for some reason or other, but instead of leaving the original file untouched, it leaves it renamed to P8151927.JPG_exiftool_tmp. This means it looks like the original image has gone missing.

Is there any way to guarantee that if the ExifTool update fails, the original won't be touched? My understanding was that it would create a temp file with the new/changed keywords, and then carry out a transactional delete/rename which would either work or not, but it seems the delete can succeed, but the rename from the temp file can then fail.

Is there any way to work around this - any additional options I can use to make it 100% resilient? If not, my only alternative is to copy the file to a temp location, run exiftool on it, and then handle the rename/replace myself. Alternatively, I could check the return code, and if non-zero, I can rename the .JPG_exiftool_tmp file back to the original, I suppose.

Any better ideas?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65870251/make-exiftool-overwrite-original-is-transactional-and-atomic

Answer 1

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