[Thunar-dev] samba

[Auke Kok]

Bob Snyder wrote:
> Auke Kok wrote:
>> Why do people think that implementing a specific way to do X (in this case, 
>> mount a samba share or browse it, which is basically the same) should beling in 
>> a filemanager?
> 
> 
> Because xffm/xfsamba did it?

xfsamba was a nice trick, but would you want to maintain xfsamba for 3 remote 
filesytems? 7? more?

This is why we use unix nowadays - we design a layer system with libraries and 
let common tasks be handled by a daemon or a library. Network browsing in 
windows isn't done by explorer.exe, but it's part of the OS itself.

In linux that means a layer in between the application and the kernel. That 
wasy all applications could browse samba shares. Wouldn't you want to browse 
samba shares in firefox too? and in OpenOffice?

Solving the problem in thunar doesn't solve it for the rest of userspace. 
Therefore it is not a solution at all. Once Thunar becomes obsolete or people 
lose interest in maintaining it, the one solution that existed is gone, useless.

oh wait, that's what is happening to xfsamba. Get my point?

The only *real* fix is to fix it for everyone in a way that all applications 
have a stake in it and gain by contributing to the health of such a subsystem.

Hal's a good start, perhaps someone can write something in the same light that 
supports network authentication sessions and can monitor and discover networks. 
But there is much much more roadwork to be done.

Thunar isn't even broken in this perspective, I would even reason that it's 
perfectly designed to accomodate such a design, thanks to Benedikt :)

Cheers,

Auke