{"id":178,"date":"2013-03-27T20:24:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T04:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intr.overt.org\/blog\/?p=178"},"modified":"2013-03-27T20:24:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T04:24:45","slug":"gvfs-mtp-updates-direct-io-and-filenames-in-uris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.intr.overt.org\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"GVFS MTP Updates: Direct I\/O and filenames in URIs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Everyone,<\/p>\n

It’s been a while since my last update (over a month!) so it’s a good time to talk about what’s been going on.<\/p>\n

Firstly, GVFS 1.16 is out – so that’s the first stable release with the MTP backend in it. w00t!<\/p>\n

Before you wonder, it doesn’t include my work to support the Android Direct I\/O extensions (that allow normal read\/write access to files on the device). I’ve now got those to a point where I’m ready to get them in, but I’m waiting on a review in bugzilla. Since my last update, all the libmtp changes have been merged and released in version 1.1.16.<\/p>\n

The second big thing I’ve done is completely change how mtp URIs work. In previous posts, I’ve talked about how I was putting entity IDs as path elements to save having to maintain an ID->filename mapping, and then relying on the gvfs display and copy name properties to make the files appear to have normal names when looked at. I ultimately decided to abandon this approach for a couple of reasons. The main one is that with Direct I\/O support, every application that can operate on files can be used with an MTP device, and most of those apps don’t know anything about gvfs and can’t use the special properties. The second reason is that there are edge cases where it’s impossible to tell if you’re looking at a filename that’s all numbers or an entity ID. So, I’ve added a mapping system and URIs now use filenames.<\/p>\n

Finally, I’ve fixed a bug in gvfs that only got triggered when unmounting an mtp device in Ubuntu 13.04 betas. The code in question hasn’t changed in gvfs for a long time, but the bug didn’t appear anywhere else. Still, there is a real code problem in there, so I’ve got a fix out for it.<\/p>\n

I’ve updated my <\/a> with builds that contain all these pending patches (although the raring gvfs got updated while mine was building so it’s now considered out-of-date) and the new libmtp, so please try the new stuff out.<\/p>\n

For the curious, here are the GNOME bugzilla entries tracking these changes:<\/p>\n