Re: gvfs-client

[Jeff Cai <Jeff Cai Sun COM>]

On Mon, 2009-08-31 at 11:59 +0200, Christian Kellner wrote:
> Hey Jeff,
> 
> 
> > I'd like to write a client without UI to upload/download files
> > automatically on the webdav servers.
> See http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs/tree/programs/gvfs-save.c, http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs/tree/programs/gvfs-cat.c 
>   and http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gvfs/tree/programs/gvfs-copy.c for  
> simple programs that kinda seems to do what you want, if I understood  
> you correctly.

Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> > So I'd like to know how to communicate with gvfsd daemon.
> As said before the client interface is gio (part of glib). The use of  
> gvfs for remote location is totally transparent. Documentation is here http://library.gnome.org/devel/gio/stable/ 
>   (See http://library.gnome.org/devel/gio/stable/ch01.html for an  
> architecture overview and how gvfs and gio work together)
> 
> 
> > Nautilus looks too complicated, so I hope there's a more simple one.
> gvfs-save, gvfs-cat and gvfs-copy are pretty simple; save and cat work  
> with data streams you get/put and copy only with files. One thing  
> notably that is missing in all examples is the mounting of the remote  
> destination. If you are only dealing with HTTP is no problem since  
> that will be auto-mounted on demand. In case of webdav, it isn't. So  
> if you don't have an existing mount of the remote webdav share and you  
> try to transfer data from/to it you will receive and GIO error telling  
> you that the location isn't mounted yet. Look at programs/gvfs-mount.c  
> for a way how to do the mount then.

Must I mount the remote location before I can copy/paste? As I know, it
looks this is not a must, right?
> 
> One thing though: I am not 100% sure what you plan exactly is, but if  
> all you want is http/webdav you might wanna consider using libsoup  
> directly instead of gio/gvfs ; it is the http library the http/webdav  
> backend is using. Http (and sadly enough also webdav) and file system  
> abstractions often don't go so well together and we make a lot of  
> background assumptions and also there are some problems here and there.
> On the other hand if you are doing simple stuff it might just be good  
> enough.

What I want is something like Ubuntu-one or Dropbox? So I think using
gvfs is a convenient way since there are so many gvfs backends.

Thanks for your advice.

Jeff
> 
> Cheers,
> Christian