Coming from Readarr-Calibre-CWA

[Kedryn]

Having to replace Readarr, i chose to switch to Bindery.
The scenario, right now, is this:
Bindery imported calibre and readarr db. I installed the somewhat not working calibre addon from bindery (not pushing books because of a path mismatch). When new books are downloaded in bindery, they don't get passed to Calibre, so they don't end in CWA also.
I know calibre can be skipped, but i'm no black belt in how books are managed in this stack as i'm in the show and movies stack i'm running. Anyway, if i remove Calibre from the equation, what about:

I don't really understand this part. If i map the bindery's library path under the CWA library path, will it work? if yes, why do i need the copy to CWA ingest and have a double copy of each book that i may edit in CWA and desync it from bindery?

2. CWA will keep working with a calibre db, or is it able to work on it's own coupled with Bindery?

3. are there any CWA alternative that works better with Bindery, that can let me and my friends have an user ui to browse the book library and download them?

4. knowing that bindery is still in heavy development, what useful features i'll miss if i remove calibre?

[vavallee]

The thing actually blocking you (plugin not pushing because of a path mismatch) is #1346, and it's fixed in v1.26.0 which went out today. New field under Calibre settings called Push path remap: it translates the path Bindery stores a book at into the path the plugin's container sees. If Bindery mounts the library at /books but the Calibre side sees /mnt/user/media/books, set "/books:/mnt/user/media/books" and pushes stop failing. Try that before ripping anything out.

Quick answers:

1. The CWA ingest folder is not CWA's library folder. CWA watches the ingest folder, processes whatever lands there into its own Calibre library, then deletes it. Bindery copies each ebook in (rather than moves) exactly because CWA deletes what it ingests and Bindery has to keep its own copy. Pointing Bindery's library straight at CWA's library won't work, since Calibre tracks books in metadata.db, not by files showing up on disk. Two copies is the cost of running two library managers.

2. CWA is built on Calibre, so it always has its own Calibre db. It never reads Bindery's database, the only link is that ingest handoff.

3. If you mainly want a browse and download UI for you and your friends without a second Calibre library, look at Kavita or Komga. Both read straight from a folder (no metadata.db, no ingest watcher), so point them at Bindery's library folder and they serve it with accounts, a web reader, and OPDS. No double copy. Stick with Calibre-Web/CWA only if you want the Calibre ecosystem (conversion, send to Kindle).

4. Removing Calibre costs none of Bindery's core (search, grabbing, import, rename, metadata, monitoring, all its own). You only lose the one time Calibre library import and the auto push into a Calibre library. Bindery becomes your library of record and any reader points at its folder.

TL;DR: try v1.26.0 with push path remap first. If you'd rather simplify, drop Calibre/CWA and put Kavita or Komga on Bindery's library folder.