gcp is a user-friendly file copier written in Python. Its name used to stand for "Goffi's CoPier", but was changed into a recursive acronym: Gcp CoPier.
gcp is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
gcp is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with gcp. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
gcp is a file copier, loosely inspired from cp, but with high level functionalities such as:
- Progress bar.
- gcp keeps copying even when there is an issue: it just skips the file, logs an error and goes on.
- Logging: gcp writes what it's doing to a log file; this allows you to know which files were effectively copied.
- Fixing file names to be compatible with the target filesystem (e.g.
removing incompatible chars like
?or*on FAT). - Queue: if you launch a copy when another copy is already running, the files are added to the first queue; this optimizes hard drive head movement and filesystem fragmentation.
- Files saving: you can keep track of the files you have copied, and copy them again later (useful when, for example, you copy some free music to your friends on a regular basis).
- gcp will be approximately option-compatible with (GNU) cp (approximately because the behaviour is not exactly the same, see below).
WARNING: gcp is at a relatively early stage of development, use at your own risks!
First, install the following packages on your system (these Debian packages names, they may be different on other distros/systems):
- libdbus-1-dev
- libdbus-glib-1-dev
- libgirepository1.0-dev
- libcairo2-dev
- python3-cairo-dev
Then install gcp with pip: pip3 install gcp
apt install gcp
Pretty much like cp (see gcp --help and man gcp).
Please note that the behaviour is not exactly the same as cp's, even if gcp
aims to be option-compatible. Mainly, the destination filenames can be modified
(cf. the --fix-filenames option).
gcp doesn't implement all the options GNU cp has yet, but it's a long-term goal.
The log file is aimed to be used by gcp itself, buts remains human-readable. It
is located in ~/.gcp/journal.
3 states are used:
- OK means the file was copied and all operation were successful.
- PARTIAL means the file was copied, but something went wrong (file permissions could not be preserved, file name had to be changed, etc.).
- FAILED: the file was not copied.
After the state, a list of things that went wrong is shown, separated by ", ".
Here are some ideas for future developments:
- handle XDG
- copy queue management (moving copy order)
- advanced console interface
- notification (XMPP and maybe email) when a long copy is finished
- retry for files that were not correctly copied
- badly encoded unicode filenames fix
- file copy integrity check
And in an even more distant future:
- graphic interface
- desktop (Kde, Gnome, XFCE...) integration
- distant copy (FTP)
- basic server mode, for copying files on network without the need of NFS or other heavy stuff
A big big thanks to the authors/contributors of...
-
progressbar: gcp uses ProgressBar, a class coded by Nilton Volpato that allows the textual representation of progression.
-
GLib: This heavily used library is used here for the main loop, event catching, and for DBus. Get it at https://developer.gnome.org/glib/.
-
DBus: This excellent IPC is ut the heart of gcp. Get more information at https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/.
-
Python and its amazing standard library: gcp was coded quickly for my own needs thanks to this excellent and efficient language and its really huge standard library. Python can be download at https://www.python.org/.
If I forgot any credit, please contact me (email below) to fix that.
Big thanks to contributors and package maintainers.
- Original author: Jérôme Poisson a.k.a. Goffi goffi@goffi.org 2010-2011.
- Thomas Preud'homme robotux@celest.fr 2011: manpage, stat resolution fix.
- Jingbei Li a.k.a. petronny 2016: conversion to Python3.
- Matteo Cypriani mcy@lm7.fr 2018:
--fix-filenamesoption, Python3 fixes.
Feedback, bug reports, patches, etc. are welcome, either by email or on the repository's issue tracker https://code.lm7.fr/mcy/gcp/issues.
You can also have a look at Goffi's other main project, Salut à Toi (SàT), a Jabber/XMPP-based multi-frontend, multipurpose communication tool.
Don't hesitate to give feedback :)