[Deja-dup-hackers] Integrating backup restore into Nautilus

[Urban Škudnik <urban skudnik gmail com>]

Hey guys,

I tried talking to you on IRC but Cosimo didn't reply and Alex is  
going on vacation so I thought mailing you would be better for  
explaining the situation and keeping the rest of my team in loop.

I am a GSOC student working on Deja Dup [0], which is a backup program  
designed with simplicity in mind so that users without CS/IT degrees  
(e.g. grandma ;)) can do backups and restore their files in the  
simplest manner possible.

State of the project basically goes as this: program supports backup  
and full restore, but during my GSOC time I am trying to address  
restoration of individual files (partial backup). I already designed a  
quick restoration of files that were deleted from a certain directory  
by adding a new menu option to contextual menu. The next issue that I  
will try to resolve is a bit harder - restoring individual files and/ 
or directories - basically selecting a subset of files that we have in  
backup and restoring them.

To do this we thought of several options but semi-current version of  
mockup that we designed and are trying to implement is located here [1].

One thing that will surely struck you if you look at the mockup is  
that we will have to use a lot of components that you have implemented  
for Nautilus and indeed we are re-inventing a file browser with the  
difference being that we are showing files from backup that are not  
actually on the file system.

Therefore we naturally thought of developing an extensions for  
Nautilus but as far as I came with my research this is not something  
that is possible because Nautilus does not offer any way to add files  
that don't actually exist on filesystem which is the point at which  
you guys come in :)

(You can see the layout that we would like in a mockup, although  
slider that enables user to slide left and right to select a backup  
point and calender would be moved under breadcrumbs just above  
IconView. The backup mode itself would probably be activated from view  
menu.)

The first question that I have is what kind of view Nautilus team has  
on this integration? The most obvious benefit for this is that we can  
provide high level of integration with Deja Dup and provide some nice  
usability improvements for users but on the other side I am not quite  
sure how would you guys take integration with a single program.

Would you be willing to provide more extensive API? Should I patch  
Nautilus if user installs Deja Dup (any recommendations on how to best  
accomplish this)? Anyone tried developing Nautilus with Vala or do I  
need to use C for all development?

Maybe do you have any other suggestions on how to best approach this  
problem?

[0] https://launchpad.net/deja-dup
[1] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1493539/past-rest-mockup.pdf