alt Hacker NewsThis design still doesn't work: what if the user walks away and the computer is powered off in the meantime?
I.e. you need to write the report of this to a file itself. In fact you should allocate a decently large file upfront to make sure you can write the report and the error message (out of disk space for example).
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throw-the-towel • last Sunday at 9:00 PM
And what if the computer is kidnapped by the US Army while it's copying the files?
You just can't defend against everything, but an imperfect solution can still be an improvement over the status quo.
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It goes quite far, actually.
A file transfer should remain active even if both devices (source, destination) are physically disconnected, or in network partitions, or when devices are full, need media change, etc.
The only valid states for a file transfer are: ongoing, fully completed with 100% success, or explicitly cancelled by the user with a full usable report of what got copied, fully or partially, and what did not get copied.
The file transfer dialogs and tooling of today's mainstream computing are stuck in the nineties.