Handling of incomplete (in progress / aired right now) season packs with updatable torrent release

Sonarr version (exact version): 4.0.8.1874
Mono version (if Sonarr is not running on Windows):
OS: Docker
Debug logs:
Description of issue:

I have to start by saying this may not necessarily be an issue. It could be just unsupported use case or me being stupid. Anyway, appreciate your input and comments. I am looking for either a solution or simply a confirmation of my current understanding of how Sonarr works and its limitations when it comes to the use case in question.

Background.
Typically, when a new season of a show is being aired, a few days after next episode is being released, new torrent releases pop up with some of them containing precisely one episode (the new one which was just aired) AND others containing all season episodes plus new one that just got released. Just to illustrate:

  1. Example One S02E03 Title [Release Group]
  2. Example Two S02E03 of 10 [Release Group]
    2.1 Example Two Point One S02E03-10 [Release Group]

Example #1 is obvious. 2 and 2.1 are of the same type, just slightly different naming. So, the second type is essentially an updatable torrent release, meaning every time there is a new episoded, this torrent release (torrent file) gets updated by releaser/author and a new torrent file replaces the original one from the release. I believe originally the idea behind it was that you bookmark the release in your browser and when a new episode is released you open the same release, download new torrent with additional episode included, and add it to you torrent client “on top” of the previous version of the same release. Torrent client checks the hash of the files previously downloaded (because/if they are still on the disk) and then actually downloads only a single file, which is missing. Then the same process repeats until the season is over.

Issue.
Now, I found a few posts saying that this way of managing TV shows torrent (or torrent releases in general) is very-very bad, nobody supposed to do it this way because of the reasons. But here is the problem - it’s been used not just widely - on dozens of trackers this is de-facto a standard. Basically, you won’t find any other types of TV shows releases other than the one I just described. So, this is not an edge case but a common practice on many trackers, especially, I figure, outside of English-only trackers.

I want to emphasize this: I wouldn’t even consider asking this question if I could ban (or filter with negative score those) “improper” releases, and be happy with “proper” (example #1) releases downloading automatically. The problem is - I am not exaggerating when I say this is a common practice, if I ban or filter out those types of releases I won’t be able to watch any season of any show until there is a complete season pack published.

I am not sure it makes sense to go into the details of what happens to Sonarr when it tries to handle this type of updatable releases, let me just say the only thing it would do automatically is the first time download of the first episode. Everything else requires LOTS of manual interventions every time there is a new episode published - cleaning, deleting, redownloading, re-importing, etc. of all the episodes, not just the last one. I can share all the details if needed though.

Please share your comments and questions!

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.