Merging User Logs

[Kevin Stange]

Joe Siegler wrote:
> I've got a question about Pidgin I can't seem to find an answer for.  I
> used it at work and home, and recently lost my job.  I wanted to bring
> home (which I have) my IM logs from my work copy, and merge them with
> the home copy so that they will be in one set of logs.  I don't know how
> to accomplish this (I'm on Vista).   Tkx.
> 
> I have the logs from both home and work. What I'm looking for is not
> where they are, but how to take two sets of logs and merge them together
> so that it will be a single set of logs with all the data from both sets
> in there.
> 
> I don't want to just copy the one from work on top of the version from
> home, as that will just overwrite the home version.  That's not what I
> want to accomplish - I want to MERGE the two sets, not overwrite.
> 

For practical purposes, you can probably do just that.  The modern log
system uses a separate file for each conversation.  Unless you started
two conversations on the same account with the same person at exactly
the same time there should not be filename conflicts, and so syncing
missing log files from one machine to another so that both contain the
union of all log files would effectively accomplish your goal.

However, there are some caveats. Primarily:

1) If you have any logs predating the log system rewrite (which was
prior to 1.0.0, I think), these were single-file logs and might be
inconsistent between your home directories and would have to be merged
by hand (though since they are no longer used for new logging, this
would only need to be done once (or ignored).

2) If you use an AIM or XMPP connection on two different machines at the
same time, it's possible the conversation would open at the exact same
second on both machines and cause a filename collision between both a
conversation and the one side of the conversation on the idle machine.
Logically, you could favor the larger or most recently modified file in
the case of a conflict and probably be safe.

A tool like rsync could help you merge the sets of files, with options
to only replace newer files or missing files on the destination and not
to delete files missing from the source.  Rsync isn't widely available
on Windows, but there's a binary distributed with cygwin.  You might be
able to get away with using Windows' own xcopy tool for the limited
scope you're working with.

Kevin

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