Files app: file operations improvements

[jeremypw]

Core Development. Rating - hard

Files has always been comparatively slow when operating on large numbers of files. Reported problems include:

• Copying large numbers of files (10^4 - 10^5) the operation is slow compared with other tools and slows down over time (Copying files is slow and slows to a crawl over time for large numbers of files files#1 )
• Slow to open progress window copying large numbers of files (Slow to open progress window when copying many selected files (100,000) on external device files#722)
• Interface may appear to hang during file operations (Decouple file transfers from GUI files#1555)
• Deleting lots of files is much slower (100x) than the equivalent commandline operation (Permanently deleting lots of files on fast storage is 100x slower than rm -r files#1579)

File operation code is currently being ported more or less as-is to Vala and any new code should be in Vala

Suggested areas for work

• Complete port of file operation code to Vala.
• Identify main cause(s) of poor performance copying and deleting large numbers of files
• Improve performance with large numbers of files and prevent them blocking the UI.

Skills

• Familiarity with C and Vala languages, Glib (or willing and able to learn)
• Good knowledge of Linux file operations and related libraries (gio, gvfs etc) and with asynchronous processes
• Interest in code performance optimization

[danirabbit]

@jeremypw would you be available to help mentor this project?

[jeremypw]

I would be available to help but someone with more advanced knowledge of low-level system programming and code optimisation would also be needed. @tintou has contributed most in the area of file operations recently.