Integrate the nextcloud-client-nautilus package's functionality

[amethystgosling163 (Danish Rehman)]

It allows users to share public links for their files and this is one of the main reasons people use cloud storage so that’s an important feature. If you have to open the browser to get a public sharing link for a file, then why not use the browser in the first place since you’ll have to open it to get this essential functionality?

It also has an option of being able to check the activity on a file which is useful if a file has multiple contributors which is quite common in professional settings so that’s important too.

Being able to edit the file in a browser with the edit button and copy the internal link of the file to open in a browser is also very important.

Also, beginners and even some intermediate users who previously used Windows or Mac before switching (so most of them) will just assume that this feature doesn’t exist because they never had to install a package in their previous OS to get a feature in their file manager that they want.

So for these reasons, GNOME should either include this package in their packaging recommendations to distros for a more complete experience or integrate the functionality directly into Nautilus.

[FeRDNYC (Frank Dana)]

Here are two… no, three reasons why I’m not sure this is a good fit, as things currently stand.

No integration with gnome-online-accounts (GOA)

GOA already has a nextcloud backend, so it’s possible to go into the Control Center app, select Online Accounts, and create a Nextcloud account with your credentials. If you switch on Files integration, it’ll then add a mountable remote volume for your cloud space.

But the Nautilus client doesn’t use those credentials. Even if you have an existing GOA Nextcloud account configured, you have to go through the whole login process all over again when activating the sync client (Nautilus client).

Obtrusive activation process

The moment you install nextcloud-client-nautilus, it brings up a dialog wanting you to log in to your account and set up file syncing. That’s not really something that should be forced on people as part of the default GNOME “initial setup” process, it’s something that should be opt-in.

If the client were integrated with GOA, then there could perhaps be an additional “File syncing” switch that enables the sync functionality, for users who want to activate that integration.

Siloed functionality

Even once the -client-nautilus package is installed and configured, its functionality is only available for files within the cloud sync space. Ideally for a cloud-sharing tool, you’d want to be able to share any file from anywhere, not just the files you’ve placed inside your Nextcloud directory.

At least the Dropbox client has a “Move to Dropbox” context menu option that shows on all files outside the Dropbox space, to “sorta” facilitate that goal.

Bonus: External service

Microsoft and Apple run their own cloud services, so it makes sense that they’re integrated into the default desktop experience. GNOME doesn’t, and I don’t think anyone would want to change that, because running a cloud service is a lot of work.

But integrating Nextcloud into the default GNOME experience makes that service “the GNOME cloud provider”, even though it could disappear tomorrow completely outside of GNOME’s control.

(Consider the fate of previous Nautilus extensions for integrating with Box.com (RIP), or its constantly-changing Google Drive support, a moving target due to Google’s pathological need to endlessly deprecate and replace APIs.)

Alternative

If you ask me, a more useful and less intrusive Nextcloud integration would be if there were sharing options in the GOA-managed NextCloud remote volume. (It uses WebDAV to access the remote file space, without syncing everything to your local filesystem and eating up all that space.)

If that volume could also provide sharing tools, then you could just mount your Nextcloud space, navigate to a remote file, and right-click to “copy public link” or “copy internal link” or whatever, just like you can inside the synced folders of the Nautilus client.

I’m not sure what it would take to make that work, probably API extensions to both the gvfs-dav and GOA owncloud backend. The DAV provider would have to be taught how to construct the necessary URLs using information it received from the GOA backend.