Quote from thejerrybryan on 2023-12-10, 7:45 am

Late to this party. The same basic conversation took place on the RM forums, except without the discussion of the SQLite UNIQUE attribute.

RM7 and previous versions of RM did not allow duplicate entries in the MultiMediaTable. This was enforced by the RM app, not by the RM schema. If a user added a "new" multimedia file that was already there, RM7 and previous versions simply treated it as a request to use the already existing file.

RM8 and subsequent versions (so far) do allow duplicate entries in the MultiMediaTable and do not test to determine that duplicate entries are being created. The simplest way they get there is just be the user adding the duplicates as "new" rather than as "use existing". There is no cue to the user that the duplicates are being created and there is no Merge function for duplicate media. I haven't tested the various kinds of import operations supported by RM to determine if any of them will also create duplicate multimedia files.

There has been speculation on the RM forums as to whether this behavior is a bug or if it's perhaps suggestive of an intention, for example, to support different captions for the same photo or even perhaps someday to support groups photos where you can isolate a particular individual in a group photo.

In any case, it seems like a real mess, especially without a function to merge duplicate media. I have no idea what direction Bruce is going to go on this one.