We need plugins to set their config values at run time instead of module import
time. That is, defaults should be put in the __init__ method. This is easy
enough, but to make it even more convenient, I added a BeetsPlugin.config
field, which is a Confit view into a subsection of the configuration named
after the plugin.
In an attempt to finally address the longstanding SQLite locking issues, I'm
introducing a way to explicitly, lexically scope transactions. The Transaction
class is a context manager that always fully fetches after SELECTs and
automatically commits on exit. No direct access to the library is allowed, so
all changes will eventually be committed and all queries will be completed. This
will also provide a debugging mechanism to show where concurrent transactions
are beginning and ending.
To support composition (transaction reentrancy), an internal, per-Library stack
of transactions is maintained. Commits only happen when the outermost
transaction exits. This means that, while it's possible to introduce atomicity
bugs by invoking Library methods outside of a transaction, you can conveniently
call them *without* a currently-active transaction to get a single atomic
action.
Note that this "transaction stack" concepts assumes a single Library object per
thread. Because we need to duplicate Library objects for concurrent access due
to sqlite3 limitation already, this is fine for now. Later, the interface should
provide one transaction stack per thread for shared Library objects.
This makes way more sense than fetching every metadata request from the
database. The performance of "beet ls -a" and the like should be drastically
better.
As part of this, the BaseLibrary class was also adapted to include a notion of
albums. This is reflected by the new BaseAlbum class, which the Album class
(formerly _AlbumInfo) completely replaces in the concrete Library. The BaseAlbum
class just fetches metadata from the underlying items.