I’m making good progress on podlet. I started working on the syncronization logic. There are a few important things to take into consideration before copying files to the iPod:

• What files need to be copied?
• Does the target have enough free space?
• Do we need to prepare the music before copying it?

ped recursively through my music folder, I found a few non-music items that I wouldn’t want to sync. I need to figure out a way to limit what files get syncronized. I can check file extention or mime type (assuming that checking the mime type does more than look at the extension). I also want to only syncronize music formats that the iPod support.

Checking that there is enough is critical, and there should be some kind of resolution progress if I’m trying to sync more data than the device can hold. I’m considering some kind of ‘conflict resolution’ dialog, so that if I can’t copy all of the music, the user can opt to not transfer files to the iPod, or let them open the iPod browser to remove some files.

Lastly, is there any processing we need to do on the file before we transfer it. This is more of a future enhancement (once the gstreamer-perl bindings are ready). Say you have an iPod mini that you use while jogging. For this, you’re more concerned with the quantity of music, rather than the quality. This option would let you to downgrade your music to a different format/bitrate so that you can fit more on a device.

I’ve found the Gnome2::VFS call to get the free space on the device. Once I decide on how check the file type (and I’m leaning towards mime type), I can calculate the needed space and then handle resolving any conflicts.

I’m working towards a 0.10 release sometime in the next week or so. I want to get the basics of syncronization working, so that I can get a few people to test that out while I start to add the bells and whistles like the iPod browser.