[Thunar-dev] overwriting files and the trash

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:57:28 +0100, Erlend Davidson wrote:

> On 2 Aug 2006, at 17:37, Rodrigo Coacci wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> On 8/2/06, Erlend Davidson <E.R.M.Davidson at sms.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Samuel Verstraete wrote:
>> > Hi Benny,
>> >
>> > 2 small issues...
>> >
>> > First: I was wondering if the expected behaviour of overwriting  
>> files
>> > would be to store the "overwritten" file in the trash... i certainly
>> > was expecting this but it might be just me ;)

I second that.

>> >
[...]
>> I guess what he meant was when you copy/move a file over another  
>> (using Thunar), effectively overwriting it, it could get the to-be- 
>> overwritten file and put it in trash before overwriting it.

Yeah, that would be expected.

> Ah now I see what he means - I like it, it's an interesting idea.   
> Overwriting a file is similar to deleting the file and putting a file  
> in its place with the same filename... except if you did this the  
> file you deleted would be in the trash for you.  

> It could be an option:

No, it's the right thing, so it isn't an option/button but mandatory. No
introducing of unbreak-my-application settings/buttons please.

>> But I don't really think this is reasonable... 

For me, it is :) And consistency suggests it to be that way, too.

>>> And for big files,
>>> could
>> create a big performance issue, 

How so? Moving file names around on the disk is very fast.

>> not to tell about disk space....

Hm, maybe thunar should warn when Trash is getting > 10% of disk and disk
is almost full then? (Or just start expiring old stuff? probably not)

>>
> That's going to be a problem for the trash system in general.  If you
> give people an option (like above) this wouldn't be an issue (they can
> just opt out of putting it in the trash if the file is too big).

I suggest deleting huge files instead of trashing them ("huge file": if
file size > amount of available space on that mount), after confirmation.
 
> What about standards though?  I don't *think* this breaks any standards
> because overwriting is comparable to deleting then writing again (as
> mentioned above).

yeah.

cheers,
  Danny