[Call for Testers] Restoring Google Drive integration in GNOME

Project Discussion
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Hi,

I’ve created a proposed implementation of Google Drive support that uses modern dependencies and that I hope can replace the old one that was dropped.

I’ve been using it daily for the past few weeks and it can handle my day-to-day needs. Would be great to get feedback from more people (instructions below).

Your testing and feedback would be valuable to help get this upstreamed.

Important notes:

  • Post your feedback in the GNOME Discourse thread. Even “it works great” helps! We need to know that too.

Fedora 44

sudo dnf copr enable fluhus/gnome-googledrive
sudo dnf update --refresh

This replaces some system components with Google-enabled ones, so I recommend taking a system snapshot beforehand or using a VM.

You might need to remove and re-login to your Google online account.

Fedora 43

Make sure you’re logged into your Google account via Online Accounts and that Google Drive is unmounted.


# Install build dependencies
sudo dnf builddep gvfs

# Get the code
wget "https://gitlab.gnome.org/fluhus/gvfs/-/archive/googledrive/gvfs-googledrive.zip"
unzip gvfs-googledrive.zip
cd ​​​gvfs-googledrive

# Build
sed -i s/3.57.0/3.56.0/ meson.build # temporary dependency downgrade
meson setup build -Dgoogle=true
ninja -C build

# Run
./build/daemon/gvfsd-google host=gmail.com user=YOUR_GOOGLE_USERNAME

Google Drive should be mounted now, you can test away!

You’ll know that this is the new implementation if the Google files have nice icons:

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I’m happy to answer any questions.

Thank you!

9 Likes
Google online account
Fedora 44 WS beta. Gnome 50 . No link Google Drive
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There’s a couple of suggestions to move forward:

  • Support for GNOME 50 is crucial because the old way still works in GNOME 49, and many users notice the issue only after upgrading.

  • Using Copr helps to build and distribute packages, see:
    Package gvfs in vgaetera/testing

Thanks for your work! :smiley::+1:

2 Likes
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Good job. Thank you!

Once you have it working with GNOME 50, do you plan to submit a merge request to upstream GVfs?

1 Like
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@vgaetera thank you for the feedback! I’ve added instructions for f44 using COPR (should work for rawhide too). Your example package was helpful! This is my first attempt at creating a COPR so I’m happy for any feedback or ideas.

@catanzaro yes, once there is enough positive feedback my goal is to make a merge request to gvfs.

1 Like
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It works just fine! I have tested minutes ago in Fedora 44 and it’s working as you said :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Really miss this feature and it’s awesome that we have the progress with implementing this feature! Tested it out and the auth and mounting process went well, but in the mounted FUSE directory I see the file ids instead of file names, so the content looks like this:

$ ls /run/user/1000/gvfs/google-drive\:host\=gmail.com\,user\=murznn/My\ Drive/ -1
0B65OeTkVeIyzNzc1YjhjNTUtOTVhZC00MzQ5LTlkMTYtMWM0NmIwOGZhMjFl
0B65OeTkVeIyzdTdIOGIzSE03SEE
1-YLTF8-EBijbzWnnTqDLdKbSlKVXGjg6
12ilE4T97071ySERvIEuByj1kElrigbsT
13Itwte7WhlW20Ze7mtB0taiwfQQOZBxP-BkW1sKFgJI
...

What can be done wrong and how to fix this issue?

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Responded on Discourse.

9 
[16/30] Upgrading gvfs-afc-0:1. 100% |   5.6 MiB/s | 256.7 KiB |  00m00s
[17/30] Removing gvfs-afc-0:1.6 100% | 255.0   B/s |  11.0   B |  00m00s
[18/30] Removing gvfs-afp-0:1.6 100% |   1.8 KiB/s |   9.0   B |  00m00s
[19/30] Removing gvfs-archive-0 100% | 625.0   B/s |   5.0   B |  00m00s
[20/30] Removing gvfs-gphoto2-0 100% |   1.1 KiB/s |  10.0   B |  00m00s
[21/30] Removing gvfs-mtp-0:1.6 100% |   1.2 KiB/s |  10.0   B |  00m00s
[22/30] Removing gvfs-smb-0:1.6 100% | 360.0   B/s |   9.0   B |  00m00s
[23/30] Removing gnome-control- 100% |   8.7 KiB/s | 322.0   B |  00m00s
[24/30] Removing gnome-online-a 100% |   6.4 KiB/s | 111.0   B |  00m00s
[25/30] Removing gvfs-goa-0:1.6 100% |   1.2 KiB/s |  11.0   B |  00m00s
[26/30] Removing gvfs-fuse-0:1. 100% |   1.0 KiB/s |   6.0   B |  00m00s
[27/30] Removing gnome-control- 100% | 750.0   B/s |   3.0   B |  00m00s
[28/30] Removing gvfs-0:1.60.0- 100% |   7.1 KiB/s |  87.0   B |  00m00s
[29/30] Removing gvfs-client-0: 100% |   7.4 KiB/s |  99.0   B |  00m00s
[30/30] Removing gnome-online-a 100% |   2.0   B/s |  12.0   B |  00m04s
Complete!
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It worked for me brother. Thanks a lot!!!

2 Likes
14

Is it possible to install this on Silverblue?

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It should be possible. Though I’m not super familiar with Silverblue. This might work (assuming Fedora 44):

# Get the repo file
sudo wget -P /etc/yum.repos.d/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/fluhus/gnome-googledrive/repo/fedora-44/fluhus-gnome-googledrive-fedora-44.repo
# Refresh metadata
rpm-ostree refresh-md
# Install
sudo rpm-ostree override replace --experimental --from repo='copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:fluhus:gnome-googledrive' gvfs.x86_64 gnome-online-accounts.x86_64 gnome-control-center.x86_64 gnome-control-center-filesystem.noarch gnome-online-accounts-libs.x86_64

If it doesn’t work, I’d ask the Silverblue experts. :slight_smile:

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So if all goes well, we should see this officially merged to GNOME?

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Hopefully yes. It’s currently under review with the GNOME maintainers.

1 Like
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Any news on the merge?

Working fine on Arch from the AUR after removing that old git commit from the build files but the situation is certainly not ideal lol.

19

Hi, still working out the mess with some incoming upstream changes. I hope to get this working again soon.

1 Like