Expanding Nautilus' functionality as an archive manager

[antoniof (António Fernandes)]

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, @Magio !

A few comments for nuanced context:

@Magio

As Nautilus is now (and has been for a while) the default archive manager for the GNOME desktop

nautilus is not an archive manager, nor it is trying to be one.

Specifically, it’s not trying to replace the Archive Manager app (a.k.a. file-roller).

The Files application offers plain compress and extract actions.^[1]

@Magio

it does not at this time support drag and drop functionality from the archive into nautilus.

This is a major, unforeseen regression on our side. We should fix that, really. We should try Company’s suggestion. As far as I know nobody has found the time to work on this yet, unfortunately.

@Magio

The work @antoniof is currently doing on that front, with these mockups as a basis, could also serve as a learning experience of how to adapt the Nautilus UI for functionality beyond its pure file manager job.

What I’m learning with this experience reinforces my reservations about adding an archive manager mode. Adapting to file chooser modes without breaking the file manager mode has been challenging and time-consuming enough. It would possibly take another release or two to reach this point if not for funding from the GNOME STF team.

---

1. Originally provided by the file-roller-nautilus extension, nowadays built-in through gnome-autoar. This implementation change has allowed to remove file-roller from the core modules of GNOME. But that’s a different thing from replacing it as an Archive Manager. ↩︎