When inserting an Ubuntu CD on Ubuntu...

[Jordan Mantha]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 6:49 AM, James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net> wrote:
> ...what should happen?
>
> Currently mpt says that this opens two things, nautilus, and a
> special dialog that offers to open the package manager. Obviously
> this is not great.
>
> Nautilus has an "x-content" bar that can deal with things like this.
> Plug in a memory card full of photos, or open the trash, and you will
> see it as a yellow bar under the location bar, with a button to
> launch an app to handle it. (Similar to some of firefox's
> notifications).
>
> It would be possible to make this happen for Ubuntu CDs. This would
> mean when you inserted it nautilus would open, and show you the contents
> of the CD, and have the bar offering to start whatever would handle
> the CD.
>
> For this to happen the shared-mime-info spec should be extended to
> detect and report a "deb CD" or similar. Nautilus can then add this
> to its list of special cases. The app that would open adds a line to
> its desktop file (or a new desktop file with No-Display as appropriate).
>
> There are however a couple of open questions.
>
>  * Is showing the contents of the CD the right thing, should nautilus
>    just learn not to open for these CDs and we keep the current dialog?

This is the way I'd like it, but I have sort of a hybrid idea that I
think might fit use cases a bit more even. I noticed the other day
that if I put in a 7.10 CD on my 8.10 machine it pops open the same
dialog as if I popped in a 8.10 CD or 9.04 CD. That is, it asks me if
I want to  start the package manager or run an upgrade. Can we insert
some logic here where if it's an Ubuntu CD it pops up that dialog
*only* if it's >= the current version. For an older CD we could just
pop up nautilus. Also the dialog could have a "Open in File Manager"
button if that case needs to be retained for people who don't want to
use the Places menu. Generally popping up two things is a bit
distracting and for people not wishing to browse the CD you'd have to
hit something in the nautilus bar and then hit something in the dialog
as well to get you to your final destination. So here's how I guess
I'd see it:

1) check for Ubuntu CD (we must do this already to pop up the existing dialog)
2) check if CD version is >= currently running version
3) if yes in 2) show popup with "Cancel", "Open the file manager",
"Start the package manager", and "Run upgrade"
4) if no in 2) open up nautilus directly

Also, I've noticed that for the Ubuntu Education CD where we have a
special dialog that opens, Nautilus is still launched. This makes the
addon installer experience a bit ugly, IMO.

-Jordan