PyGObject: Gio.File.copy_async() doesn't exist in Ubuntu 12.04

Question

According to GIO Reference Manual Gio.File has a methode copy_async. In Ubuntu 12.04 I'm getting an AttributeError when I try to call this method.

What should I use instead to for asynchronous copying?

I could use Gio.OutputStream.splice_async() but that doesn't give me a progress callback

Answer 1

The reference manual you are quoting is not for python. I'm aware, that with gobject introspection, no python manual is available anymore (only a tutorial), but this manual does not document the python mapped functionality. A lot of functions from C have not been made accessible from other languages.

One way you might want to go, if you do not require Gio, is simply using python built-in functions?

The concurrent.futures module does things in an async way (backported here). With that you should be able to do something like this:

import concurrent.futures
import shutil

with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
    executor.submit(shutil.copy, "test1.txt", "test1_new.txt").add_done_callback(
      process_result )
    executor.submit(shutil.copy, "test2.txt", "test2_new.txt").add_done_callback(
      process_result)

More about this version here and here.