FilePortal cannot select directories or files at the same time

[chergert]

Operating System

Fedora 40

XDG Desktop Portal version

1.18

XDG Desktop Portal version (Other)

No response

Desktop Environment

GNOME

Desktop Environment (Other)

No response

Expected Behavior

Currently we do not have API in the portal that allows for selecting either a file or a directory. In fact, this has been a problem since the beginning when we moved to GtkFileChooserNative in GTK.

Apparently we did not have a bug open for this because the discussion on it predates the issue tracker for, at the time, xdg-app.

GNOME Builder allows you to select either a project directory or a file to open using the file-chooser. If the file-filter contains inode/directory, it dynamically switches to SELECT_FOLDER instead of OPEN. This way you can just open a project directory or, alternatively, select a project file to open (CMakeLists.txt, configure.ac, meson.build, etc etc).

We've never had a way to do this via the FilePortal and now that GTK is moving towards GtkFileDialog which encodes this functionality as async functions, that becomes even harder.

One thought is that we could encoded this behavior in the actual implementations, and simply change their mode based on the file-filter being inode/directory.

Current Behavior

As above

Steps to Reproduce

Try to use org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser.* API to select a folder or open a file.

Anything else we should know?

No response

[chergert]

This should not be marked as a bug, but I have no idea how to change that. More of an incomplete-design we never finished before the ship sailed a decade ago.

[Mikenux]

@chergert: For anything that is not a bug, you can go to https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/discussions/new/choose. The most relevant (obvious) choice for a feature request is "Idea". Maintainers can convert a bug into a "discussion".

[GeorgesStavracas]

Took the liberty to convert to a discussion

[ptomato]

I have a use case for this. In the Inform programming environment, users can give their Inform programs extra capabilities by installing extensions into their project. Previously, these extensions came in the form of text files, named *.i7x. In the upcoming version, Inform is gaining support for extensions in the form of folders. These will come both in the form of folders named *.i7xd, as well as zip archives of folders, named *.i7xd.zip.

I would like to be able to create a file dialog that will allow the user to pick an extension to install into their project, no matter whether it is a folder, a text file, or a zip file.