gnome-utils, gfloppy and 2.28 plans

[Emmanuele Bassi]

hi everyone;

with the migration to Git gnome-utils lost gfloppy. the gfloppy code is
still under the gfloppy repository, like it has been for the past few
years -- and therein lies the problem: gfloppy was included using the
abomination known as svn:externals, which makes it impossible to
effectively migrate it correctly without copying the gfloppy directory
into gnome-utils.

right now, I removed all the traces of gfloppy from the gnome-utils
repository, in order for it to build properly. this, though, offers the
chance to talk a little bit about gfloppy and its future.

or lack thereof.

for the past three years (around the time I became maintainer), gfloppy
has been conditionally compiled, and the default was to leave it alone;
some distributions enabled it anyway but that's not our problem.

gfloppy is also completely unmaintained, and terribly out of scope for
the basic box. I haven't seen a floppy drive in four years, and even
then they were a relic from another age, where dinosaurs roamed huge
data centers, men were real men, women were real women and furry little
creatures from Alpha Centauri were furry little creatures from Alpha
Centauri.

some new project has been started to create a generic media formatter
utility and send gfloppy to the great floppy drive in the sky; all of
these projects are, in my opinion, completely wrong. the use bizarre
combinations of scripts and privileges escalation mechanisms to format a
disk -- instead of using appropriate tools like PolicyKit and HAL; but
most of all, they miss the only proper user interface that I would
expect from a tool that allows me to format a USB key: full integration
with Nautilus.

lately, a lot of work has been done by the DeviceKit team to provide a
sane API for accessing and formatting disks and partitions; this led to
the creation of the gnome-disks-utility application which, as far as I
know, will be proposed for inclusion for GNOME 2.28. gnome-disk-utility
will be integrated with Nautilus and will expose far more functionality
than a simple formatter tool as well.

so, long story short: we should keep gfloppy out of the gnome-utils
repository for the 2.27 cycle; IF gnome-disk-utility is approved as part
of GNOME 2.28 then we don't have to do anything and we can congratulate
ourselves with a pat on the back for having a modern and useful
platform; IF gnome-disk-utility is NOT approved then we can release
gfloppy from its repository and distributions that want to provide an
upgrade path can make gfloppy a pre-requisite for gnome-utils.

ideas? comments? thoughts?

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

--
Emmanuele Bassi,
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi

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