Re: GSD should not housekeep the thumbnails

["Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak" <mjc avtechpulse com>]

Stephane Delcroix wrote:
> As long as this plugin stays as is, we only have one choice available:
> shout "fuck you standards" and  move our thumbs out of .thumbnails. But
> I think we can figure out an arrangement:
>
> 1) the MAX_SIZE should be set to 0 by default, so the cleaning is only
> done one the thumbs age
> 2) a) either change the comparison function to check for atime instead
> of mtime
>    b) or, at every f-spot startup, touch all the thumbs we could need

I don't think f-spot needs to abandon the whole thumbnail spec. That's a 
bit dramatic.

It's no big deal to modify the default MAX_AGE and MAX_SIZE settings to 
something that people consider "sane". Suggestions? Right now it's 60 
days and 64 MB, but I have no problem increasing them if there is a 
consensus. Would 6 months / 512 MB be more sane? (f-spot could provide a 
UI to adjust these.)

Right now .thumbnails grows without limit, which isn't good. The average 
user is surprised to find a >100 MB thumbnail cache in a hidden directory.

Some other random issues raise in this thread:

To disable, you need -1, not 0. Zero will delete every thumbnail upon 
logout (tin-hat mode)!

atime is not practical - so many people disable it that it can not be 
relied upon.

Deleting thumbnails for files that no longer exist is not practical. You 
would have to read every thumbnail file to extract the png txt that 
identifies the original uri, then check that uri. Very slow. Plus, some 
people will not appreciate losing thumbnails for transient network 
shares or CDs/DVDs.

- Mike