Re: projects for a beginner to work on?

[Michael ROGERS <M Rogers cs ucl ac uk>]

>I'd like to see a simple personal and easy to use personal back-up 
>program.  Basically what I'd like to be able to do is drag a file or 
>directory from the GMC to the backup window or icon and it would add that 
>file or directory to the backup set.  When you run the backup it would 
>create a tar.gz file wherever you tell it to.  Of course you could set it 
>to run automatically.  I've seen something like this for windows and it 
>would be cool to have it in Gnome.  Most backup program are overkill for 
>the average user who just wants to automatically copy a few files and/or 
>directories to a zip disk every now and again.  Basically I think the code 
>for gTar or a similar program could be modified to do something like this.

 A related tool which might be very useful would be a trashcan applet for the
panel. It would accept dragged-and-dropped files, and if the authors of gmc
would cooperate with you, they could add a "Trash" option to the context menu
next to "Delete" which would call the trashcan program. Basically a file
trashed by either method would be added to an archive in the user's home 
directory called .trash. It would be timestamped with the time it was added, 
and the original path would be stored. I think a tar archive could provide 
both of these features.
 The improvement over a Win95-style Recycle Bin would be that
files could be automatically deleted from the archive after a week, for
example, so you wouldn't have to worry about emptying it unless you needed the
space. Any files you tried to restore which couldn't be restored to their 
original directories should optionally be left in your home directory instead.

 Again, I'm sure you could hack up one of the existing tar frontends to make
this tool. If no-one else is interested I might try it myself.


 - Michael Rogers