[Thunar-dev] Thunar auto mounting removable devices (a la gnome-volume-manager)

[Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues]

Big Initial Disclaimer: This message is by no means a feature request.
I want to make clear that I'm not demanding that the developers
implement any of the ideas exposed on this message. I know that there
are few developers, with few time, and I do recognize the effort made
by all of them in delivering xfce for us. Thank you.

Hi everyone

I would like to know if the initial plans for thunar include support
for mounting and displaying removable devices (as nautilus +
gnome-volume-manager does).

I know that coding both infrastructure and UI for this feature would
be hard, but it may worth the effort, as it would be really useful for
most users, specially those that are not very proficient with
computers/linux (and it's usually handy for experienced people).

Main potential issues that would come if this mechanism is implemented
into Thunar:

1 - Resource usage: As I'm not an skilled programmer, I have no idea
if this can be implemented in a lightweight way, since we would need
to have a whole stack of services running (hotplug, udev, hal, d-bus,
daemon, filemanager)  Maybe more experienced developers can comment on
this.

2 - Reliance in linux 2.6 specific behaviour: The stack of
technologies previously mentioned  (hotplug, udev, hal, d-bus) depends
heavily on linux 2.6 technology [1], making the solution not widely
portable across free unix-like systems (freeBSD, solaris, you name it)
but it can be made in such a way that the service quits cleanly when
it doesn't have the needed infrastructure running.

3 - Complexity: The developers may consider this way too complex for a
simple file manager, and not worthy at all: while this would be ok,
it's interesting to note that interacting with external media
(cd-roms, video and data dvds) and devices (pen drives, digital
cameras) plays a central role in most users experience. Making the
users free from manual tasks usually needed for using this devices
improves greatly the desktop experience. And, if we can do this with
fair resource usage, it would rock!

I would like to hear opinions about this idea . Let's make a good discussion.

Thanks for your attention

Lucas

[1] Obviously not all components mentioned demands linux 2.6, but you
got the idea.