First I want to say thank you to everyone that showed interest. Apparently this type of plugin is desperately needed. My initial version was just a quick hack to transfer meta data to and from my iPod. Note the extremely hackish nature of the link between iPod and rhythmbox tracks (filename only).

Now for the changes:

1. The most common complaint was the rhythmbox crashing bug (Segmentation Fault). This is caused by the gpod module when it attempts to locate and read the itunes database on the iPod. My fix was to just check if gpod found the itunes directory, print an error to the console, and skip any processing at all. This will prevent killing rhythmbox, but doesn’t actually fix anything.
2. More intelligent rating updates. I used mockenh’s idea to compare last played dates to determine which rating to use in case of a conflict.

I don’t really have the desire to implement playlist, or podcast synchronization since I have very little time, and I am only a mediocre programmer at best. If someone wants to swipe my code to build on, they are more than welcome to.

Some notes about my implementation.

1. I just use a periodic rsync to copy music from my iPod to my PC. rsync -av /media/BFUNGUS/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/ Change any paths as necessary.
2. Since I don’t copy songs to the iPod using Linux, I didn’t write that support into it
3. The detection of the iPod mount location is dependant upon the GnomeVFS module. It must correctly recognize your iPod as a Music Player
4. The python gpod module must be installed. Debian users can apt-get install python-gpod

ipodsync v0.2

While I do use iTunes at home to do my normal master sync, I need to have my music on my computer at work. So I simply rsync my iPod’s Music to my computer.
rsync -av --delete /media/BFUNGUS/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/
Change the location of your iPod if named and/or mounted differently.

This works great. Rhythmbox found and read the tags of my music, and I have a fully functional music player. Except for one thing. I regularly use ratings and time of last play to make smart playlists. I need this data synchronized to and from my iPod.

Enter the iPodsync plugin for rhythmbox to synchronize ratings, time of last play and play count to and from the iPod. It will autodetect the iPod via GnomeVFS calls. It connects the rhythmbox API to the libgpod API to make the mesh. After installing and enabling the plugin, it will add a Tools -> Sync iPod menu item to initiate the sync. There is no other GUI yet to give you an indication of progress, but it is pretty darn quick. Any Rhythmbox GUI experts want to help out??

Anyway, here it is.
Just extract this archive to your rhythmbox plugins directory (/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins). Restart rhythmbox, and you should be good to go.
Rhythmbox iPod Sync plugin