Google Summer of Code Proposal: File manager integration for Linux.

[Steve Borho]

On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 07:37 +0200, Peter Arrenbrecht wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 12:57 AM, Steve Borho <steve at borho.org> wrote:
> >
> >  On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 18:13 -0400, Germán Poó-Caamaño wrote:
> >  > On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 21:48 -0500, Steve Borho wrote:
> >  > > On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 22:09 -0400, Germán Poó-Caamaño wrote:
> >  > > > I sent the following proposal for GSoC.  Some personal information
> >  > > > was added in the detailed description.
> >  > > >
> >  > > > I just read about another proposal about Shell integration (Nautilus
> >  > > > and Windows), but it was detailed just for Windows environment. I
> >  > > > hope this does not mean any conflict in any place.
> >  > >
> >  > > Are you aware of the work done to integrate TortoiseHg into Nautilus?
> >  > >
> >  > > http://tortoisehg.wiki.sourceforge.net/Nautilus
> >  >
> >  > I wasn't aware of that integration. That's great (even if my proposal
> >  > gets weak in this part).
> >  >
> >  > > It is still experimental in quality (mostly because of strange behavior
> >  > > in nautilus-python itself), and could use quite a bit of work, but a lot
> >  > > of the obvious parts have been done.  In fact, I think I borrowed some
> >  > > of this initial work from you :)
> >  >
> >  > Nice to hear it was useful :-)
> >  >
> >  > As far as I see, submenus "works" with nautilus-python 0.5; which is not
> >  > available on Fedora 8 or Ubuntu 7.10.  It is possible to made a backport
> >  > if you want to give it a try.  I did it (back in January in order to
> >  > test if another bug were fixed), but currently I'm running Hardy.
> >  >
> >  > Certainly, I would like to see TortoiseHG/Nautilus stable. I will
> >  > give it a try tomorrow night.
> >
> >  Sounds great.
> >
> >
> >  > In my proposal I wrote two goals: one of them was the plugin but the
> >  > another one was building a GUI (consistent with the plugin interface),
> >  > in order to provide the features that are not possible to get using the
> >  > File Manager.
> >  >
> >  > As application I had in my mind something like Giggle, which is a
> >  > GUI for git (http://developer.imendio.com/projects/giggle).
> >  >
> >  > Probably I will need to focus my proposal on Thunar or write a new one.
> >  > I would like receive feedback.
> >
> >  I think an app similar to giggle would be highly appreciated, but I
> >  would suggest that you start with the changelog browser already included
> >  with TortoiseHg and work out from there.  It already has a lot of the
> >  pieces that you do not want to write from scratch (some of which could
> >  take all summer on their own).
> >
> >  It's likely that the application work would be more broadly useful than
> >  the nautilus work, ...
> 
> Steve, can you enlighten me as to why this is? I would have thought
> enhancing Nautilus is where there's the bigger payoff.

All Mercurial users (Linux, Windows, Mac) would benefit from the
application work, while only Gnome users would benefit from the Nautilus
integration.

> >  ... but would also require significant effort.  You could
> >  knock off a lot of the long-term TortoiseHg TODOs if you integrated a
> >  well designed working directory browser and commit tool directly into
> >  the changelog app.
> >  TK or I would probably volunteer to be a mentor if you picked this
> >  approach for your application.
> 
> Now that would be a most welcome addition! Please please please go for
> it, Germán!
> 
> And if I may make personal suggestion, a dialog to map renames/copies
> prior to commit à la `hg addremove -s` but that allows me to associate
> files interactively (and via similarity) would be welcome.

Qct allows you to do some of this today using the context menu (matching
up unknowns with missing files or copy sources), but there is an item on
the TODO list to add a more generic addremove feature to the built-in
commit tool.

-- 
Steve Borho (steve at borho.org)
http://www.borho.org/~steve/steve.asc
Key fingerprint = 2D08 E7CF B624 624C DE1F  E2E4 B0C2 5292 F2C6 2C8C