fix(locations): register watcher on location add, canonicalize paths

[slvnlrt]

Summary

Locations added at runtime are never registered with the FsWatcherService. The watcher only discovers locations at startup via load_library_locations(). This means no filesystem events (creates, deletes, renames) are detected for any location added through the UI until the app is restarted.

Additionally, LocationManager::add_location() stores paths without canonicalization, so relative paths (from cwd-dependent contexts) break the watcher, volume manager, and indexer.

Changes

1. Register watcher on location add (locations/add/action.rs)

After LocationManager::add_location() succeeds, call fs_watcher.watch_location(meta) to start OS-level filesystem monitoring immediately. This mirrors what load_library_locations() does at startup.

• Only registers local physical paths (remote/cloud skipped)
• Graceful fallback if watcher not available (warns, doesn't fail)
• Uses canonical path to match DB storage

2. Canonicalize paths before storing (location/manager.rs)

Call tokio::fs::canonicalize() on local physical paths before storing in DB.

• Converts relative paths to absolute
• Resolves symlinks and .. components
• Strips \?\ UNC prefix on Windows (same pattern as volume/manager.rs)
• Only for local device paths — remote paths pass through unchanged

Test plan

• Add a location via the UI, then copy/delete/rename a file inside it — changes should appear in the UI immediately without restart
• Verify the watcher log shows Watching location <id> at <path> after adding
• macOS/Linux: verify no regression (location add + file operations)
• Remote locations (if testable): verify no canonicalization attempted on remote paths

Related

• PR fix(delete): resolve Content paths, progress updates, DEL keybinds #3041 fixes the delete pipeline itself (Content path resolution, keybinds, progress). This PR fixes the watcher not detecting FS changes after those operations complete.

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Adds async normalization of local physical SD paths (including Windows \?\ prefix stripping) when adding locations, and registers newly added locations with the filesystem watcher; watcher registration failures are logged and do not change the action result.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Path canonicalization core/src/location/manager.rs	When sd_path is a local physical path, asynchronously canonicalizes the filesystem path; converts canonicalization errors into LocationError::InvalidPath. On Windows, strips \\?\/\\?\UNC\... prefixes from canonicalized paths before constructing SdPath::Physical. Non-local sd_path values are unchanged.
Filesystem watcher registration core/src/ops/locations/add/action.rs	After LocationManager::add_location(...) returns, attempts to derive a local path, canonicalizes it (falls back to original path on failure), applies Windows prefix normalization, builds LocationMeta (id, library_id, root_path, default rule toggles), and calls fs_watcher.watch_location(meta).await. Watcher errors are warned via tracing::warn! and do not affect the returned LocationAddOutput.

Sequence Diagram

sequenceDiagram actor User participant Action as LocationAddAction participant Manager as LocationManager participant FS as Filesystem participant Watcher as FileSystemWatcher User->>Action: execute(add location) Action->>Manager: add_location(sd_path) alt sd_path is local physical Manager->>FS: tokio::fs::canonicalize(path) FS-->>Manager: canonical_path / error opt canonical_path (Windows) Manager->>Manager: strip "\\?\" / "\\?\\UNC\\" prefixes end end Manager-->>Action: location_id opt action has local path Action->>FS: tokio::fs::canonicalize(local_path) FS-->>Action: canonical_path / error opt canonical_path (Windows) Action->>Action: strip "\\?\" / "\\?\\UNC\\" prefixes end Action->>Watcher: watch_location(LocationMeta{id, library_id, root_path, rule_toggles}) alt watch success Watcher-->>Action: ok else watch error Watcher-->>Action: error (logged, non-fatal) end end Action-->>User: LocationAddOutput 

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Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~25 minutes

Poem

🐰 Paths hop through the canonical gate tonight,

Windows prefixes tucked out of sight,
Watchers awake to keep watch and cheer,
New roots arrive, tidy and clear,
I nibble bugs — all safe, all right.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 2 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 50.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (2 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely summarizes both main changes: path canonicalization and filesystem watcher registration upon location addition.
Description check	✅ Passed	The pull request description is comprehensive and well-structured. It includes a clear summary of the problem, detailed explanation of changes in both files, a test plan with checkboxes, and relevant issue references.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 2

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed. Inline comments: In `@core/src/location/manager.rs`: - Around line 61-71: The Windows UNC handling in the cfg(windows) block around the canonical variable must recognize the UNC form "\\?\UNC\server\share\..." and reconstruct it as a valid UNC path "\\server\share\..." before falling back to stripping a local-drive "\\?\" prefix; update the logic in the canonical normalization (the block that currently uses canonical.to_string_lossy() and strip_prefix(r"\\?\")) to first check strip_prefix(r"\\?\UNC\") and if present create a PathBuf from "\\" + stripped, otherwise strip r"\\?\" for local drives, else return canonical; mirror the approach used in core/src/volume/fs/refs.rs to ensure starts_with("\\\\") checks in classification.rs work correctly. In `@core/src/ops/locations/add/action.rs`: - Around line 108-126: The watcher is being registered with a canonicalized path that still may contain the Windows extended prefix, causing mismatches with the persisted path; update the block that builds root_path (inside the if let Some(local_path) ... and before creating LocationMeta and calling fs_watcher.watch_location) to apply the same Windows path normalization used by location_manager.add_location() — i.e., strip the Windows "\\?\" extended prefix (or otherwise normalize to the exact form saved to the DB) after tokio::fs::canonicalize returns and before constructing LocationMeta, so that LocationMeta.root_path matches the normalized DB path used by the persistent handler. 

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Repository UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 386339bf-614c-4c9f-8672-fbf9d51dbaa0

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 4d87617 and 2e778e9.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• core/src/location/manager.rs
• core/src/ops/locations/add/action.rs