GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 46883
Nautilus should optionally display files and their backups as a single object
Last modified: 2012-08-29 19:29:39 UTC
A proposal to consider: Many applications have backup files that get strewn around the filesystem, so badly that people have to waste cpu resources running cron processes to find them and delete them. It would be useful for GNOME to do the following: 1. Standardize a "backup file" type. Alternatively, allow applications to register a "backup file" type in gnome-vfs. There doesn't have to be a standard location for these, but it would be helpful to users to put them in the same folder as the actual file. That way, in case of a catastrophe, users don't have to go fishing for the backup in some "." folder they didn't even know existed. 2. Provide an API for creating and using these backup files to facilitate standardization. 3. Give users the option in Nautilus to display files and their backups as a single object on the desktop. If a user moves a file, the backups are moved too. If a user deletes a file, the backups are deleted along with it. This feature seems to depend on 1 and 2, since Nautilus would have no way of knowing what is a backup and what isn't without a standard way of identifying them. Andrew ------- Additional Comments From darin@bentspoon.com 2001-02-22 12:56:59 ---- Nice idea. ------- Additional Comments From eli@eazel.com 2001-03-26 11:10:19 ---- QA Assigning to self. ------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2001-09-09 21:00 -------
Changing to "old" target milestone for all bugs laying around with no milestone set.
This is definitely a future enhancement - not enough cycles available to do it any time soon.
Are there any plans to realize this feature ? Btw, now users can't see backup files in comfortable way in nautilus, because there are only option to see hidden and backup files, but this is not user-friendly, because only few users like to see hidden files. It would be nice if developers add ability to see backup files without hidden files.
I wrote some additional considerations in the Ubuntu bug tracker at <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/132812>. See the comments there. Specifically, what about showing a warning dialog when backup files exist for some files affected by the user's operation (move, rename, delete)? The dialog could read: "Some files that you are about to move (delete, rename, copy) apparently have hidden backup copies: [clickable list of backup copies follows] Do you want to move (delete, rename, copy) those backup files as well?" The list of relevant backup copies should allow the user to examine the files' contents.
While you're creating a standard "backup file" type, you could build in a simple versioning system by using timestamps along with the tilde character, so that apps could save multiple backups for each file. Also, I really dislike the idea of a warning dialog. Just assume that the backup files are associated with the regular files. Popping up a warning dialog that will always get the same response ("Yes") every time someone moves a file would be very annoying.
I think that in the normal view, all "attached" files should be treated as a single file, without prompting the user. If you move document.txt, document.txt~ will be moved with it. In "Show Hidden Files" mode, though, the attached hidden files will be shown. They should be next to the main file they are attached to, with some sort of line connecting them, or a colored border surrounding the group, etc. Now if you select the main file, the hidden files are not automatically included. This would let people restore from backups or make forks, etc. This concept could be applied to several different "groupings" of files: * Backups * Text file.txt * Text file.txt~ * Web page (complete) - Windows style * Complete web page.html * Complete web page_files * Resource forks from OS X * File name * ._File name http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14879/ https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/132812
For the same reasons mentioned in bug 676352 I don't think this is a good idea. Honestly, the apps shouldn't be littering the filesystem with temporary or backup files anyway. They should really go into ~/.cache.