Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] RFC: removable media

[John McCutchan <ttb tentacle dhs org>]

On Mon, 2004-03-22 at 01:45, Ben Konrath wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-03-20 at 20:28, John McCutchan wrote:

> When this came up last time, Colin Walters mentioned that it would be
> nice to be able to add the removable media to the sources list. What do
> you think of this idea? (see http://cfergeau.free.fr/rb-ipod.png for an
> example) 
> 
> This would make it easy to remove a source that wasn't going to be
> inserted again. I'm not sure if Colin meant that the library would still
> contain everything and the removable media source just have what was on
> the media, or the music on the removable media would be kept separately
> from the main library. Perhaps we could get clarification from Colin.  
> 

A variation on this could be support by providing a source for each
physical location in the database. So you don't have to specifically add
a removable device, it is just aggregated from the database. This way
all the music is still be in the library.

The downside to this would be cluttered source list when you have many
removable devices, but say, only one is present. 

Maybe a combined approach would better, for every physical location in
the database that is currently present, we show a source for it. But
group all of the physical locations that are not currently present under
one source "Unavailable"?

> Also Christophe Fergeau mentioned that "one issue with Rhythmbox and
> removable medias currently is that as soon as you start playing a file
> on such a media, you cannot easily unmount this media because rhythmbox
> only knows how to pause a song, which keeps the file opened, and thus
> prevents you from unmounting." Have you thought about this issue?

This will require more integration between the entire system. There
needs to be a "user requested unmount of device X" signal sent to apps,
then rhythmbox can stop using any resources on device X.

John