Re: [Nautilus-list] Idea for Nautilus and GMC.

[Ian McKellar <yakk yakk net au>]

On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 08:23:38PM -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Currently when people download executables from the network, say for
> installing software, they can not execute them because the execute bit
> is not set.
>
> So typical installation instructions for a Unix application look like
> this:
>
>       1. Click on this link to download.
>       2. Run a shell
>       3. type chmod +x file
>       4. Run
>
> Ideally, we want to avoid this problem in GNOME, and we just want
> executables to just work.  As they do in Windows.  
>
> So I would like to suggest that we set this bit manually if the user
> double clicks on a file that happens to have an a.out or ELF
> signature.  Maybe we could popup a warning or something, but the
> result should be that files downloaded in this way would just work.

Not a bad idea I guess. With nautilus you can just 
<right-click>/Show Properties and edit the permissions from there.

You should be able to mock up your idea by adding a simple application that
is registered as the handler for elf/a.out files which does what you described.

One issue might be that executables and shared libraries are the same format.
(I think)

Ian