Ask whether to merge or to rename pasted folders on copy and move

kha..@..il.com said:

Please, I second this, it happened several times it merged when I did not intend to and then un-doing is a mess as there is no CTRL-Z like in Caja.

Guido Falsi said:

Looks like in recent thunar (at least version 1.8.10) the merge behaviour has disappeared and thunar now asks to replace the whole folder.

When was this committed to the tree? Can someone point to a specific commit?

Guido Falsi said:

(In reply to Guido Falsi from comment 2)

Looks like in recent thunar (at least version 1.8.10) the merge behaviour has disappeared and thunar now asks to replace the whole folder.

When was this committed to the tree? Can someone point to a specific commit?

Looks like what changed is the requester, using the word "replace" in the button. After telling it to replace directory contents are still merged.

Marko Cupać said:

I was also puzzled by new behaviour, to the point that I opened PR in FreeBSD's bugzilla:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=242142

As Guido said, at least on FreeBSD, clicking "replace" merges folders.

I don't mind additional click to get the functionality I'm used to, although I would prefer the possibility to configure it "old way" or "new way", something like "do not warn when merging folders" in preferences.

What I do mind is the confusion created by using word "replace". I am not native English speaker (although I take pride in my C2 certification), but "to replace" sounds like "put new in place of old". It's not exact "overwrite", but sounds more like "overwrite" than "put new to place of old, leaving old as well if there are no conflicts".

I think prompt should offer "merge", "overwrite" and "and "cancel", and should be opt-in in preferences.

Alexander Schwinn @alexxcons said:

Thanks for reporting!

Just checked, it is a side effect of this commit:

https://git.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/commit/?h=xfce-4.14&id=db49aa728b029ca1c398d0d8bee9a41db0c399ce

However for some reason my concrete observations seem to differ from yours:

My setup: test/folder/file1 (some text inside) test/sub/folder/file1 (empty) test/sub/folder/file2

Using STRG+C /STRG+V to copy "test/sub/folder" into "test" gives me, like before, the possibility to merge. I am asked to overwrite on each file. Using DND or STRG+X /STRG+V to move "test/sub/folder" into "test" gives me, only the option to replace. No possibility to decide if single files are overwritten any more. file1 will be replaced by an empty one. That is what I would expect from the "replace" button I pressed.

Do you see the same concrete behaviour on BSD, or something different ?

That change in behavior actually is a direct result of the fix of Bug #15727 before a copy was performed when a folder already existed, leading to time consuming operations. Now the old folder is deleted an a move is performed instead. A merge is not foreseen in that scenario.

Like before, it still would be nice to be asked to rename the existing folder, like this bug suggests.

Alexander Schwinn @alexxcons said:

Possibly it would be nice to have an additional "merge" button on move, which could, like before, do a copy and than deletes the origin.

Marko Cupać said:

(In reply to alexxcons from comment 5)

Do you see the same concrete behaviour on BSD, or something different ?

I haven't done any thorough tests, just my use case, which never involves files of the same name, just folders of the same name with files of different names.

IIRC warning about replacing files existed before this change. But if there was no _file_conflicts, folders were silently merged.

After the change, warning about replacing folder happens, and - if there are no file conflicts - it gets merged after clicking "replace".

Hope this helps. I'd be glad to do further testing if needed.

Alexander Schwinn @alexxcons said:

(In reply to Marko Cupać from comment 7)

IIRC warning about replacing files existed before this change. But if there was no _file_conflicts, folders were silently merged.

Yes, exactly. That is still the case if you use CTRL+C and CTRL+V (copy) but not any more for CTRL+X and CTRL+V (move). Move will now ask you if it is fine to replace the folder.

After the change, warning about replacing folder happens,

Only for move, not for copy.

and - if there are no file conflicts - it gets merged after clicking "replace". Negative, for me on "move", the folder is replaced, like the dialog says. Could you please re-test that use-case ?

added 5. Dialogs 5. File Operations labels

In the latest thunar git, I can no longer merge folders by moving or copying. If I select "Replace" or "Replace All", it throws an error "Can't copy directory over directory".

This is particularly annoying when I'm trying to consolidate multiple folders with folders of the same name in another location (with the new thunar git, I have to go folder by folder recursively and manually move only the files).

Posting in this issue since they appear to be closely related. I can create a new bug report if needed.

How to reproduce:

Create the folder structure:

mkdir testparent
mkdir testparent/testmerge
touch testparent/testmerge/file1.txt
mkdir testmerge
touch testmerge/file2.txt

Next, use thunar to move or copy "testmerge" into "testparent"

Try this:

git checkout master
git fetch
git pulll

(already fixed in 75a3066d , was a regression)

thought i had already replied to this - my apologies. i can confirm that merging works as expected in latest 4.18.0 release.

mentioned in issue #819 (closed)

mentioned in issue #49 (closed)

mentioned in issue #1273 (closed)

marked #1273 (closed) as a duplicate of this issue

marked this issue as related to #1273 (closed)

From #1273 (closed) (Moving and copying a directory to an existing location):

by @kuraga:

The situation:

If I copy a directory and there is a directory with the same name, Thunar 4.18 just joins them.

If I move a directory and there is a directory with the same name, Thunar 4.18 asks to replace the latter. Clicking "Replace" we join them.

The question:

Why does actions differ?

Why replace? What about the Join-Dialog?

Thanks!

by @alexxcons:

Why does actions differ?

I have no idea … this would require to dig into the code and/or the commit history.

Why replace? What about the Join-Dialog?

Basically the same answer. I doubt that they differ on purpose. I suppose the right thing to do would be, to ask the user what to do: [Merge] [Replace] [Rename] We already have an issue for that: #154 So let's close this one as a duplicate ... feel free to add additional info to #154 (ideally a patch or merge request )

mentioned in issue #1245 (closed)

marked #1245 (closed) as a duplicate of this issue

marked this issue as related to #1245 (closed)

From #1245 (closed) (Feature request: option to go to rename automatically when pasting a file in folder where a file with that name already exists):

by @alexxcons:

Though, I am not sure if it is a good idea to introduce such a "directly rename" feature .. it's not very intuitive to directly popup a rename dialog. Probably it would indeed be better to first ask what to do. So we could reuse a dialog, like described in #154.

Another corner case:

Create a new folder (with the default name).
Try to create a new folder (with the default name).
It will ask you to Replace, Replace All, Skip, etc.

mentioned in issue #1424 (closed)

@lastonestanding
My other post was closed so I could not answer your question so I will answer it here if that is okay. I was not aware that the "Replace" button doubles as a "Merge" button.
I would agree that to me this seems like it could be dangerous because both the Merge & the Replace actions are part of the same action, as opposed to how to how this is typically seen in other file managers.
Usually you get asked the question to merge and then after that if the two folders you are merging happen to contain items with the same names within them, you get asked again how you want to handle those identical named instances. In Thunar it just merges and replaces in one action, no questions asked, so not sure if taking the risk of using this button in this case. This is a rather old post so maybe not as important as I am viewing it.
Anyways just wanted to let you know that it was not a specific issue experienced as you asked, but just figured I would share my concern while I was here.

Thank you again guys

Ask whether to merge or to rename pasted folders on copy and move

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