Newpods

Copy new podcast downloads to your portable music player

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NEWPODS(1) Newpods Manual NEWPODS(1)

NAME
newpods - Find recently downloaded podcasts and suggest useful commands

SYNOPSIS
newpods [-d] [-h] [-m] [-v] [-q] [-Q] [timespec]

DESCRIPTION
For the impatient, see the QUICK START section below.

This script is used to find recently downloaded podcasts, and can
insert the proper commands into the bash shell’s command history list
to copy them to a portable player into the bash history list. The
location of the podcast directory tree and the location of the portable
player are set in the configuration file .newpodsrc.

By default, newpods will look for podcasts that have been downloaded
since the last time the program was run, or, if newpods has not been
run before, in the last 24 hours. This search time can be set by giving
newpods a time specification. A time specification indicates a time
before the current time. Files newer than this are considered ’new’,
and newpods will create a command to copy them to the destination. The
format of a time specifiction is perhaps most easily shown by example.

12 Indicates 12 hours. A plain integer is interpreted as a number
of hours.

:30 Indicates 30 minutes. This may be used with hours, so 7:04
represents 7 hours and 4 minutes.

1d A number followed by a ’d’ indicates a number of days. A day is
the same as 24 hours. This may be combined with hours and
minutes, so 1d3 represents 1 day 3 hours, and 1d1:01 represents
1 day 1 hour and 1 minute.

There is no restriction on the value of the days or hours parameter,
but minutes must be between 0 and 59.

newpods assumes that podcasts are downloaded into either a single
directory or a tree of subdirectories underneath a single directory,
and that podcasts should be copied into a single directory. This means
newpods will only work with players that support UMS (USB Mass
Storage). UMS players look just like USB drives on a computer - they
will show up as a directory somewhere in the file system. On a Mac,
they will appear in the /Volumes directory. For example, an iRiver
might show up as "/Volumes/iRiver U10". newpods handles different
players by keeping a list of the directories in which each player
appears, and then stepping through this list. The first directory
newpods finds that currently exists on the machine is considered to be
the target directory for the run.

newpods
. <path-to-newpods-file>/newpods

In the first form, it finds the newest podcasts, and suggests a command
to copy them to a portable device. In the second form, the script can
put these commands into the bash history list, where they can be
accessed with an up-arrow key. To use the second form, it would be most
convenient to set up an alias:

alias newpods=’. $HOME/bin/newpods’

assuming you put newpods in the bin directory in your home directory.
Otherwise, replace $HOME/bin with whatever directory you put newpods
in.

Newpods should correctly handle file and directory names that contain
spaces.

OPTIONS
-v
Print version information and exit.

-h
Print a short help summary and exit.

-m
Print a detailed user guide and exit.

-d
Prints some extra information while the script runs.

-Q
Disables the display of the copyright and license information.

-q
Disables the alias-nag when newpods is run as a script.

QUICK START
Run newpods once. This will create a default configuration file named
.newpodsrc in your home directory.

Edit the information in this file to match your system.
You will need at least to change ’source’ (to point to wherever
your new podcasts are) and ’destinations’ (to where you want
newpods to copy the podcasts to. If you have more than one portable
device, make one entry for each device (see examples in .newpodsrc
for more information).

Make an alias:
alias newpods=’. path-to-newpods’

where path-to-newpods is wherever the newpods script is located.

If you do it this way (invoking it with a ’.’), newpods will be
able to put the appropriate commands in the bash history, where you
can access them with an up-arrow. newpods does not do any copying
itself. It puts a ’pushd path-to-destination’ on the history list,
so you can go delete any files you’ve already listened to, and then
a ’cp -v <all the new podcasts> <path-to-destination>’, to copy
them there, once you’re satisfied with the current contents of your
music player.

Run it.
newpods 24

will find all the podcasts that have been downloaded in the last 24
hours.

newpods 2d

will find all the podcasts that have been downloaded in the last 48
hours.

newpods

will find all the podcasts that have been downloaded since the last
time newpods was run.

newpods -d

will find all the podcasts that have been downloaded since the last
time newpods was run and spit out all sorts of information about
what it’s doing.

FILES
There is one file associated with newpods; the configuration file
.newpodsrc. newpods will search for this file in three locations, and
will use the first one it finds. The locations are: 1) The user’s
current directory, 2) the directory that contains newpods, and 3) the
user’s home directory. For further details, see the comments in the
file itself.

If this file does not exist, newpods will create a template version in
the user’s $HOME directory. This template version must be edited to put
in the correct values for ’source’ and ’destinations’ before newpods is
run again.

DIAGNOSTICS
The following diagnostics may be issued on stderr:

No configuration value found for "source"
There was no entry in .newpodsrc for the source tree. There
needs to be exactly one source tree specified.

No configuration value found for "destinations"
There was no entry in .newpodsrc for the destination directory.
There needs to be at least one directory specified.

Configuration file not changed
The rest of the message is: In the configuration file "<name of
configuration file>", the value of "<source or destinations" has
not been changed from the initial default value. Please edit
the configuration file "<name of configuration file>" so that
the values match your system.

When newpods creates a configuration file, it puts in values for
"source" and "destinations" that it knows can never be correct.
These values must be changed appropriately for your system.
There are some suggestions and examples in the configuration
file.

Unrecognized time specifier "<some wrong time spec>"
newpods is fairly strict about what it will accept as a time
value. See above for examples.

Did not find a device to copy to!
newpods could not find any of the directories listed in the
"destinations" section of the configuration file. This could
happen if the destinations refer to one or more portable music
players, none of which are currently attached to the computer.

BUGS
Please report any bugs to the tracker at the Sourceforge project page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/newpods/

AUTHOR
Written by Bob Forgey <rforgey at grumpydogconsulting dot com>

newpods 0.8.0 11/24/2009 NEWPODS(1)