[Rhythmbox-devel] Behaviour of delete on MP3 players

[Dave Martin <david airgeadstudio net>]

Folks

I raised a bug in bugzilla (584704) about Rhythmbox's behaviour when 
deleting files from external devices. There seem to have been a few 
similar bugs raised over a fairly long period but no definitive answer 
has been found. I'd like to put out a possible solution to the list and 
see what everyone thinks.

Essentially the problem is this - Rhythmbox obeys the GNOME convention 
that file deletions should go through the recycle bin. This is fair 
enough for the main library. You have two options when removing a file - 
Remove which removes from the library and Move to trash which moves to 
trash. this also holds for external devices (ipods, mp3 players etc) 
where I don't think it works.

If I have a USB flash type MP3 player full of files, I move to trash 
from within rhythmbox to free up space to add new files but I can't as 
the files are still on the device. I need to go to my desktop, empty the 
trash to free up the space then come back to rhythmbox to add files. 
This adds an unnecessary (and annoying) step into the workflow.

Another scenario where this causes problems is if I delete (move to 
trash) files then unmount the device without emptying the trash. There 
is no option to empty trash on unmount so the trash folder in the device 
is left full.

To make matters worse, as a result of some of the earlier bugs, for mp3 
players, the remove option apparently physically deletes the file 
(according to a comment from Jonathan in the bug) while the move to 
trash still moves to trash. For Ipods the move to trash seems to 
physically delete in the newest builds but moved to trash in older ones. 
This means we have three different behaviours in three different parts 
of the application.

Can I propose the following - For the main library, supply the usual two 
options - move to trash and remove. For all external devices provide 
only one option "remove from device". This would physically remove the 
file from the device. I can see no use in having a recycle bin on an 
external mp3 player. You could maybe make an argument about having one 
on an external hard drive but those don't generally appear as a device 
in rhythmbox anyway. There is no need for a remove option to remove from 
the library as external devices aren't part of the main library anyway.

I'm happy to go through and make these mods if people agree that this is 
the best approach.

Any suggestions/comments?

Cheers
Dave