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<p>Hello,</p>
<p>After <a href="https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/18236">3.0 regression: directory parser recursives infinitely</a> got fixed, we have users complaining that VLC no longer does full recursive parsing of directories added to the playlist:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/21211">Opening folders doesn’t add files into playlist from sub-folders recursively</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/21158">Problems with recursive adding in the playlist</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p>The 2nd ticket states <em>“In 3.0.4, we changed it. People complain”</em>, which is both accurate and inaccurate. What actually happened was that we fixed a regression that, because of a bug, caused the default behavior, <code>--recursive=collapse</code>, to have the same behavior as <code>--recursive=expand</code>.</p>
<p>Given that the bug was present for such a long time, it seems many users have started to rely on (and like) the broken behavior present in versions prior to <code>3.0.4</code> (which should only have been enabled on <code>--recursive=expand</code>).</p>
<p>I stated that the broken behavior could already be relied upon, but I failed to see just how wide-spread this actually was. Below is a link to the relevant patch where I mention it.</p>
<ul>
<li>https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2018-July/120454.html</li>
</ul>
<p>So, now we need to decide how we handle this. From what I can tell there are two viable paths to walk, either we;</p>
<ol style="list-style-type: decimal">
<li><p>leave the behavior as it currently is, and do our best to educate users that they can change the recursive behavior (and get back to the one in <code>3.0.3</code>) by using <code>--recursive=expand</code>, or;</p></li>
<li><p>change the default value of <code>--recursive</code> to <code>expand</code> instead of <code>collapse</code>.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I have no idea how many silent complaints we have, nor is it easy to see how many users that actually appreciated the regression-fix. Given the activity on <em>trac</em>, it seems to imply that most users actually want to do full recursion by default (though it is as with most things a mere guess).</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Best Regards,<br />
Filip</p>
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