[Tracker] REVIEW: 'follow-symlinks' branch

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

Hi all,

There was recent interest in following symlinks within Tracker:

  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=726264

For those that don't know, Tracker uses GIO and in nearly every case the 
G_FILE_QUERY_INFO_NOFOLLOW_SYMLINKS flag, documented here:

  https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/GFile.html#GFileQueryInfoFlags

The bug above talks about how disruptive this is for git-annex which 
almost entirely uses symlinks to git objects/resources in .git/. We've 
had this policy/code in Tracker for a LOOONG time, I think, to avoid 
following files onto remote file systems or into public (e.g. 
/usr/share) areas.

I knocked up a preliminary branch here:

  https://git.gnome.org/browse/tracker/log/?h=follow-symlinks

Which removes these flags for testing, but I wanted to gauge usefulness 
before taking this any further.

So:

1. Would a patch/branch like this be useful to anyone?

2. Would it make sense to make this a configuration option in the 
miner-fs (defaulting to the current practise), that way, avoiding any 
unexpected behaviour from what we have now?

Thoughts?

--
Regards,
Martyn

Founder & Director @ Lanedo GmbH.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/martynrussell