the one true gphoto method?

["Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak" <mjc avtechpulse com>]

Hi all,

How are gnome photo apps "supposed" to import photos these days?

Most apps still use libgphoto2 to import photos, and it works just fine, 
with the minor proviso that it locks the camera while in use.

However, some distros are shipping with the gvfs backend for gphoto, 
which means that gio users can share a camera, but old apps using 
libgphoto2 are broken because the gvfs backend locks them out.

The current hackish solution is to unmount the gvfs mounts from the 
desktop file [1]. This just feels evil.

The alternative is to use gio to transfer files, and ditch the direct 
use of libgphoto2. Add a wrapper layer, in other words. Except the 
libgphoto2 authors seem to have a very low opinion of the gvfs backend 
[2], and don't recommend it.

We could also use gio when a gvfs mount is detected, and fallback to 
libgphoto2 when the backend is not present. Which is just cranking up 
the complexity.

Those who don't adopt one of those methods are "too lazy or something", 
apparently [3].

The problem was noted a year ago at release time [4], but it's not 
obvious to me that anything is better now.

I don't really see what the benefits of the gphoto gvfs backend are. So 
we can share cameras - but how many different photo importers do you 
need to run simultaneously?

So... is there an official line of thought here?

- Mike



[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gthumb/+bug/287689
[2] 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=4A15A4FD.3050501%40figuiere.net
[3] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=582066#c5
[4] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-vfs-list/2008-March/msg00027.html