Re: Thumbnail cleanup UI patch (bug 150483)

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 02:41 +0100, John Spray wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150483
> 
> Since we're at the start of a development cycle, perhaps now is a good
> time to consider the issue of accumulation of thumbnail files consuming
> disk space indefinitely.  At present, when a thumbnailed file is
> deleted, its thumbnail file in ~/.thumbnails lingers.  This can lead  to
> consumption of substantial wasted space, particularly for those who
> frequently handle large numbers of images.
> 
> On this bug, I propose and implement a user interface that provides two
> functions to help with this problem:
>       * "Empty Thumbnail Cache" deletes all thumbnails
>       * "Clean Up Thumbnail Cache" deletes only those thumbnails that
>         are for files that no longer exist.
> 
> These are made available as buttons in the nautilus File Management
> Preferences dialog.  Although I recognise that this is not an incredibly
> elegant way of dealing with the problem, it at least provides some
> respite, and a definite improvement over the present situation (which
> demands that the user know about ~/.thumbnails).
> 
> Some other possible mechanisms for dealing with this problem that others
> may be interested in:
>       * Some kind of indication to the user when they're low on disk
>         space, the thumbnail cleanup being presented as one way of
>         freeing space.
>       * The automatic background removal of redundant thumbnails.  This
>         involves opening thousands of pngs, so would have to be
>         implemented very delicately to avoid impacting performance.
>       * Intelligent removal of thumbnails by nautilus upon
>         deletion/moving of files.

I would much rather see an automatic handling of this. We could
automatically remove thumbnails that have been removed already (at least
for local files where we can tell, although its problematic for
removable media), or not accessed (atime) for some (perhaps
configurable) time. This doesn't have to affect performance much,
because we don't have to do all the thumbnails in one go. We can do, say
a few at a time in some time interval.

Triggering this from low-on-disk is also an interesting idea, although
slightly more complicated to implement.

Also, if anyone would like to look into removing thumbnails
automatically when nautilus removes/moves files that would be much
appreciated.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an uncontrollable misogynist gangster with a robot buddy named Sparky. 
She's a scantily clad out-of-work mechanic who dreams of becoming Elvis. They 
fight crime!