I want to mass import & merge basic genealogical data, with the specific need to automate merge as much as possible (see a related Q here). I assume the user (me) already knows which imported object should be merged to which object in the tree, and these associations are already noted to the data to be imported as known Gramps ID-s.
I have learnt that CSV Import can do exactly this: existing objects can be labelled in the CSV by their Gramps ID, e.g. as [F0015] so that relevant data will be added to family [F0015], potentially overwriting data in the tree (which is fine when automated).
I have also learnt that Gramps XML import cannot do this:
“[…] the import feedback gives suggestions about what could be merged; the merge is not done automatically for you. If you want to merge basic genealogy data automatically, consider CSV Spreadsheet Export/Import.“
Now assume the basic genealogy data to be imported is already in XML format. To have automerge, one has to convert it to CSV, which is ultimately converted back to Gramps XML when imported. This seems unnecessary.
Would it be possible to tell the GrampsXML import to do automerge whenever a known Gramps ID (or internal handler for absolute precision) is encountered? I understand that XML is more rich than CSV, and can contain all sorts of conflicting data that may be unclear how to merge. But I have to point out that CSV import handles this automatically, at least for basic data. So can the conversion step be eliminated and do automerge directly on XML import up to the extent CSV import can do it? I would not mind only merging basic genealogical data (persons, names, birth, death, marriage), and anything else should pop up as suggestions to be evaluated by the user manually.