File Management

[jklewa]

• Make the app data dir user configurable (this is where assets and pubman.db are stored)
• design_asset.file_path should be relative to the assets dir, not an absolute path
• When a new file is added, track the original's filepath, size, and last modified timestamp
• On the design details page, show file name, size, and last modified timestamp
  • Files should be grouped by their type (Design Files, Images, Other).
  • Items within groups should be reorderable.
  • Link to original file in a Finder window, detect if it has since been modified/removed, and notify user with an icon/tooltip
  • Preview of images
  • Nice to have: Preview/render of design files

[Sithrazer]

An alternative approach may be to ask the user for the existing directory containing their files when creating a new project in PubMan, recursively grab file details of the folder contents and list them in the PubMan project. In the PubMan project, give the user a way to select files to publish. When publishing, PubMan then stores the selected-to-publish files in it's own data folder.

Once there are published files, have 2 file lists in the UI:
Published files, with metadata of the stored published version of the files
Local Files, with metadata (and filepath?) of the users working directory

The UI could include elements to:
highlight metadata differences that may indicate a difference between the published and working directory version of files
'Open Working Directory' to let the user quickly access their working/source directory
'quick update' files with metadata differences (update PubMan's stored version with the working directory version, and push the updated version to file hosts)
'update path to working directory' allow the user to update PubMan where to find the working directory if the user moves it around on disk.

PubMan could check file metadata in the working directory on launch or via an update button.

This would allow PubMan to be 'aware' of the user's working directory and only doing enough file management to assist in the core purpose of being a publishing assistant.

I typed this up kinda quickly on my lunch, let me know if there's anything unclear or doesn't make sense.

EDIT:
Using an MD5 hash of the file in addition to or instead of metadata might be a more foolproof way to check for file changes and might allow for verifying against the currently hosted live version through the platform's API.