Temporary file (.<filename>.mscx,) not removed

• Feb 11, 2015 - 21:32
Type
Functional
Severity
S4 - Minor
Status
by design
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

Environment: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)
GIT commit: a925ae0

After editing and saving a .mscz file an extra file except the new mscz file is saved in the target directory. The file is named "..mscz," . Apparently this a temporary file.

Of course the file is invisible in Linux or OSX, but is is confusing some Windows users. They just miss the starting dot and trailing comma, and assume it is a regular mscz file.

If this temp. file has no use after MuseScore is closed succesfully, could it be deleted?
If it has any use then could it be saved in another place (e.g. in ./Documents/MuseScore2/tmp) so that is clear for the non computer literate that these are temporary files?

The same issue exits in v1.3 but since the release of v2 is upcoming it is probably not important enough to warrent the resources to solve it there.

Comments

• Feb 11, 2015 - 21:55

It is important to keep it as a form of backup. I was under the impression these files were supposed to be hidden (by MuseScore) on Windows in 2.0, specifically for the reason you cite (countless backup files have been accidentally posted to the forums prior to 2.0 as a result). But some people may have display of hidden file enabled.

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• Feb 12, 2015 - 11:30

@All: OK, I should have done some more research beforehand. I did look in the manual, but I couldn't find anything referring to .mscz, or temorary file. I didn't realize it was a backup since it isn't created at the first change made, but instead at save time.

The issue originated the Dutch forum where someone was 'throwing away that nasty mscz files' for years. The person didn't see the real mscz as such, since the default behaviour of Windows Explorer does not show the extension if it is associated with a program. The backup file is indeed hidden with the default settings of the explorer, but appaerntly this person changed the settings of Explorer to also show hidden files. He has no knowledge on his PC, he just works with it for years...

Anyway, to make it absolutely clear that we are talking about backup files why not put backup as extension or create a directory backups and create the backup files there.
Without knowing anything on the internals of MuseScore, it seems worrying that the backup is not created upon the first change made, but at saving the file. It suggests that if MuseScore crashes one does not have a backup of the work already done in this session.

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• Jul 31, 2018 - 07:49
Reported version ⇒ 2.3

The problem occurs when a folder is shared between Mac/Linux and Windows computers, such as when using a Dropbox shared folder. When a Mac/Linux user saves a score, the resulting '.*.mscz,' is visible on any Windows computer.

Bug: '.*.mscz,' files created by the Mac/Linux versions of MuseScore are not hidden when viewed on Windows
Layman Proposed Solution: The Mac/Linux versions of MuseScore should create a '.*.mscz,' file with the necessary file metadata attribute to make it hidden on Windows

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• Jul 31, 2018 - 08:03
Reported version 2.3 ⇒ 2.1

I 'm not aware of Linux/Mac having such meta data for hiding files, there is no 'hidded' or 'system' attribute like there is for Windows (actually this is a function of the file systems, FAT and NTFS have these, ext2 and other Linux/UNIX/Mac file systems don't)

And the original issue as described in the title Temporary file (..mscx,) not removed is based on a wrong assumption: these are not temporary files, but backup files and as such should not get removed.

Other cloud services like e.g. box.com don't even sync those files (or can get configured not to), so you see them only on the side that created them, not anywhere else

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