[Sugar-devel] [PATCH] Share Journal entries over external devices #1636

[Simon Schampijer]

On 11/30/2010 02:27 PM, Simon Schampijer wrote:
> On 11/30/2010 11:01 AM, Simon Schampijer wrote:
>> On 11/26/2010 04:33 PM, Sascha Silbe wrote:
>>> Excerpts from simon's message of Thu Nov 25 10:51:16 +0100 2010:
>>>
>>>> metadata and preview of an entry are stored in hidden files. For
>>>> example
>>>> when copying an entry homework.pdf to the device a file called
>>>> .homework.pdf.metadata and .homework.pdf.preview will be stored on the
>>>> device as well. Those will be read in when copying an entry from the
>>>> external device to a Journal.
>>>
>>> I'm not yet convinced of that approach. How do you detect and handle
>>> "stale" metadata and preview files? Especially since you "hide" the
>>> files (how do non-Unix OSs handle dot-files, BTW?)
>>
>> On a Windows XP machine I had access to the dot-files. Windows does
>> handle the visibility of a file with an attribute. On OSX the dot-files
>> are not shown.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Simon
>
> Note about the hidden files on windows: I looked a bit around, and there
> is no way to set that attribute on Linux, AFAIK. To reduce the number of
> visible secondary files on the stick, we could pack them into one hidden
> folder as well.
>
> We discussed the two approaches (hidden files with the metadata per
> entry vs archived file (like JEBs [1])) a bit yesterday. Here is a short
> summary:
>
> Use Cases:
>
> * share a Journal entry with your classmate using a storage device
> (alternatives are here the file transfer option in the Journal)
>
> * backup your Journal entry on a storage device, or transfer it over a
> storage device to another machine, this includes writing and reading
> (alternatives here are the Server side backup)
>
> * the backup/restore has to be possible over several Sugar versions
> (upgrade path)
>
> * copy the picture you painted to your storage device and show it to
> your mom on her computer
>
>
> Current status:
>
> AFAIK the school server currently handles the backup by rsync [2]
> (Martin?). Are there future plans for fine grained backup (per entry)?
>
> Sascha seem to use the JEB in his activities for backup and restore
> [3][4]. Sascha are those used in a distribution already? Used by a
> deployment?
>
> It seem as well that some work has been going into Dextrose to provide
> backing up functionality [5]. Bernie, is this actually available in
> Dextrose?
>
> Regards,
> Simon
>
> [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal_entry_bundles
> [2]
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Blueprints:Datastore_Simple_Backup_and_Restore
> [3] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4326
> [4] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4327
> [5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Backup_and_Restore

I have been reworking the approach (places all the metadata/preview 
files in one dotted folder). And I have written code that does convert 
0.82 entries to the new scheme.

The new description is here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal_Entries

Getting feedback about this approach would be great.

Regards,
    Simon