Change missing plugin to allow for filtering albums by release type

[bgrassy]

Description

Addresses #2661.

Currently, the missing plugin when ran in album mode only allows for getting all release groups attached to a single artist. Users may want to restrict this search to only show releases of a specific type (such as albums or compilations). This CR adds a new --release-type flag to the missing plugin. If users want to filter to a specific type (or set of types), they simply need to provide this flag for every release type that they want included.

As part of this change, the default behavior has been shifted to only select album type releases as is suggested in the issue- to avoid breaking default behavior I could easily switch this back. I am also wondering if it might make sense to address the following idea (#5101) in a follow-up.
Bug fix: This change also fixes a bug where --album mode incorrectly reported albums already in the library as missing. The original code compared release group IDs from MusicBrainz against Album objects (which never matched). This now correctly compares against mb_releasegroupid.

To Do

• Documentation. (If you've added a new command-line flag, for example, find the appropriate page under docs/ to describe it.)
• Changelog. (Add an entry to docs/changelog.rst to the bottom of one of the lists near the top of the document.)
• Tests. (Very much encouraged but not strictly required.)

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 69.63%. Comparing base (3bcc539) to head (165a79e).
✅ All tests successful. No failed tests found.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #5587      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   69.55%   69.63%   +0.08%     
==========================================
  Files         141      141              
  Lines       18498    18504       +6     
  Branches     3026     3027       +1     
==========================================
+ Hits        12867    12886      +19     
+ Misses       4995     4982      -13     
  Partials      636      636              

Files with missing lines	Coverage Δ
beetsplug/_utils/musicbrainz.py	92.91% <100.00%> (+0.05%)	⬆️
beetsplug/missing.py	77.27% <100.00%> (+19.44%)	⬆️

... and 1 file with indirect coverage changes

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[snejus]

Apologies for a very late review, one question

[snejus]

Suggested change

	"release_type": ["album"],
	"release_types": ["album"],

[snejus]

1. Call as_str_seq() here to make sure it handles release_types: a b c
2. No need to default to ["album"] as that's already the default. I think we should leave users the option to specify an empty list release_types: [].

Suggested change

	release_type = self.config["release_type"].get() or ["album"]
	release_type = self.config["release_type"].as_str_seq()

[bgrassy]

I changed the default on line 229 (still have the question linked to below surrounding if we actually want this default to be ["album"])

[snejus]

Given my comment above, we may have an empty list here. What happens if we submit type="" to MB API? If the results are the same as if no types are supplied, then we can leave it as it is.

Otherwise, maybe we should check that the list is not empty and only then supply this argument?

[bgrassy]

Just checked this- type="" returns the same results as not passing type, so I left it as is. One question though- this does change default behavior from running no type filter to filtering just to --release-type album. Should I instead set the default to empty in the config?

[snejus]

Is it still possible to override this with missing: release_types: [] using the config?

[snejus]

By the way, rename the flag to --release-types as well!

[bgrassy]

Renamed (and changed the flag to support comma separated multiple inputs). One of the tests checks that release_types: [] in the config passes an empty type string to the musicbrainz request, so that should match that behavior.

[snejus]

Love it!

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

PR add new missing --release-type filter for album mode, and fix bug where album mode mark albums already in library as missing (now compare against mb_releasegroupid).

Changes:

• Add --release-type flag (repeatable) and default album-mode browse to type=album.
• Fix missing-album detection by comparing MB release-group IDs to Album.mb_releasegroupid.
• Update tests + docs + changelog; extend MusicBrainz browse kwargs to accept type.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
beetsplug/missing.py	Add release-type filtering and fix comparison to use mb_releasegroupid.
beetsplug/_utils/musicbrainz.py	Allow type kwarg for browsing release-groups; route through _browse.
test/plugins/test_missing.py	Add regression test for mb_releasegroupid compare + new release-type tests.
docs/plugins/missing.rst	Document --release-type usage and examples.
docs/changelog.rst	Add entries for new flag + bug fix.

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