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How do you deal with either working from your Dropbox folder ( convoluted) or having duplicate folders (local syncing)?

by zyfo 16y ago

mitchellhislop 16y ago
When I did the same thing, I just moved my filesystem into it, set everything to download into it, and away I went. It also helped me actually do something with info, rather than leave it there and not touch it. However, I bet on a mac you could rsync or cron it to keep local and DB together.
edanm 16y ago
Great question, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Eventually, I realized that it wasn't convoluted to work from my Dropbox folder. At least the problem wasn't keeping project files there. After all, most projects are just lots of source code, and it doesn't matter where it sits. The big problem with keeping projects in there is that each project might have computer-specific configurations. I try to keep those to a minimum, by e.g. using relative directories whenever possible. For the few things that I can't keep completely relative, I rely on environment variables that I set on each computer I work on. Other than that, I haven't run into any problems working right out of my Dropbox directory. At one point I considered running all my software from Dropbox (using portable versions), but that really did cause a lot of headache (most programs have session-specific configuration which would cause problems on different computers). Have you run into any other problems with keeping projects inside Dropbox?
- zyfo 16y ago
  Mostly I found it annoying to switch from ~ to ~/Dropbox while on the command line. Is there any way to change the folder Dropbox? If so, I guess it could be the same as ~.
  - edanm 16y ago
    You can do it with a registry hack, but I didn't/wouldn't go down that road.
SandB0x 16y ago
No need to choose. Create a symbolic link. You can create these via drag and drop in Linux (ctrl+shift in Gnome) and OSX (command+option), and via some other trickery in Windows. http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/SyncOtherFolders http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/SyncOtherFolders
- edanm 16y ago
  One note for Windows users: Dropbox doesn't work well with symlinks. So you'll have to put the actual directory into Dropbox, and create a symlink to it from wherever it is you want.

How do you deal with either working from your Dropbox folder ( convoluted) or having duplicate folders (local syncing)?

by zyfo 16y ago

How do you deal with either working from your Dropbox folder ( convoluted) or having duplicate folders (local syncing)?

When I did the same thing, I just moved my filesystem into it, set everything to download into it, and away I went. It also helped me actually do something with info, rather than leave it there and not touch it. However, I bet on a mac you could rsync or cron it to keep local and DB together.

edanm 16y ago

Great question, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Eventually, I realized that it wasn't convoluted to work from my Dropbox folder. At least the problem wasn't keeping project files there. After all, most projects are just lots of source code, and it doesn't matter where it sits. The big problem with keeping projects in there is that each project might have computer-specific configurations. I try to keep those to a minimum, by e.g. using relative directories whenever possible. For the few things that I can't keep completely relative, I rely on environment variables that I set on each computer I work on. Other than that, I haven't run into any problems working right out of my Dropbox directory. At one point I considered running all my software from Dropbox (using portable versions), but that really did cause a lot of headache (most programs have session-specific configuration which would cause problems on different computers). Have you run into any other problems with keeping projects inside Dropbox?

zyfo 16y ago
Mostly I found it annoying to switch from ~ to ~/Dropbox while on the command line. Is there any way to change the folder Dropbox? If so, I guess it could be the same as ~.
- edanm 16y ago
  You can do it with a registry hack, but I didn't/wouldn't go down that road.

SandB0x 16y ago

No need to choose. Create a symbolic link. You can create these via drag and drop in Linux (ctrl+shift in Gnome) and OSX (command+option), and via some other trickery in Windows. http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/SyncOtherFolders http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/SyncOtherFolders

edanm 16y ago
One note for Windows users: Dropbox doesn't work well with symlinks. So you'll have to put the actual directory into Dropbox, and create a symlink to it from wherever it is you want.