[Geany-devel] Overwriting a link on save as

[Enrico Tröger]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 12:50:27 +1100, Lex wrote:

Hey,


>> It probably depends on whether we can assume or not that if we
>> successfully removed the original file we'll be able to create the
>> new one.
>>
>> Again, thoughts?
>
>
>g_file_set_contents is documented as behaving the way we want with
>respect to links so that sounds a good way to go instead of deleting
>the old file and hoping we can create the new one.  Of course on
>Windows g_file_set_contents has its own set of problems, so
>technically we should do something else when writing to a windows file
>(eg via samba) but I don't know how you tell so ignore for now?

I'm not sure whether this whole problem is a bug or feature :D.
As Dimitar said, it's rather a feature (or better: just expected
behaviour), on the other hand, I can imagine that behaviour could be
quite surprising.

I tend to fail in guessing most users' preference, so I won't try it
this time :D.

Quick weird idea:
we could add an option in the Save As dialog which is only enabled or
even shown (though enabling/disabling should be preferred) when a
target file is selected which is a symlink according to the result of
g_file_test(filename, G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK)).
This option is enabled/disabled according to the currently selected
file which could be updated by connecting to the "selection-changed"
signal of the GtkFileChooserDialog.

Or, less intrusively, when the user chose a filename and finally click
"OK", we check whether the target file is a symlink and ask the user
what to do, maybe with a "remember my choice" checkbox.

As I said, just a quick idea, not sure whether it'd be worth the
efforts.

Oh, yeah, as Lex said, we need to think about Windows. Maybe
G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK is always false on Windows as there are no real
symlinks, at least not like on Unix-like systems. I don't know off-hand
whether GLib considers Windows' shortcuts as symlinks as well. If not,
it'd be easy. In anyway, this is easy to test on a Windows system.

Completely no idea about Samba. Maybe G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK returns
false in this case as well, always. Need to be tested I guess.

Just my 2cents.

Regards,
Enrico

-- 
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