[Geany-devel] Persistency

[Nick Treleaven]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:02:32 +0100
Stephan Aßmus <superstippi at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am Montag, den 15.12.2008, 13:37 +0000 schrieb Nick Treleaven:
> > On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:28:00 +0100
> > Stephan Aßmus <superstippi at gmx.de> wrote:
> > 
> > > this is my first mail to this list, so I want to tell you that
> > > Geany is quite a cool editor and IDE. Although I am using it as
> > > an editor only, since the project format of the project I am
> > > working on does not seem to be supported (cmake). I searched the
> > > archives a bit and saw that someone is working on a cmake plugin.
> > 
> > Geany doesn't support any build systems really. Projects are not for
> > managing build systems.
> 
> I was just trying to explain why I couldn't use Geany's project
> feature.

I don't see why using CMake is incompatible with using projects, but
anyway...

> > > persistency information were stored with each individual files
> > > instead? Can't file metadata/attributes be used for this? (That
> > > being said, I don't even know if Ubuntu has xattr support turned
> > > on by default...) That method would be much more robust and
> > > scalable.
> > 
> > Not sure if it would be portable then.
> 
> I think the Linux kernel will support it through an emulation layer,
> if the filesystem has no support or has it turned off (at least so I
> heard). So it's more a matter of wheather the API is available. But
> what's the alternative, anyways? It would mean to create and maintain
> a separate settings file for each file Geany ever opened (or some
> database). And if the file is moved/renamed, there go the settings.
> Worse yet, settings files will linger for files which may have long
> been deleted. No, storing the settings *with* the file is really the
> only solution. If the kernel or filesystem don't have support for
> metadata, bad luck.

OK, sounds like a neat way to implement it.

> > This could be done as a plugin to handle support for persistency
> > when any file is closed/reopened. Probably this shouldn't be in the
> > core.
> 
> Ok, I may look into writing my own plugin then, I guess. Already
> needed to build Geany from source to get the newest version...

See:
http://www.geany.org/manual/hacking.html#writing-plugins

If you have any questions, just ask.

> persistency is really something very important to any application
> that deals with documents, and if it's missing, it's very annoying
> for the user. Obviously I'm under time pressure, so I can't promise

Personally I use sessions, but full persistency would be a cool
feature.

Regards,
Nick