8 ms·

How difficult would it be to build a Dropbox clone on top of this?

bloopernova 7y ago
Do you mean rclone or a whole service like Dropbox? (Rclone is pretty amazing, btw) https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/
- sansnomme 7y ago
  Automated filesync cross-platform. Not git-style manual push pull. More of leave and forget and only intervene when there's a file conflict.
  - Nux 7y ago
    Like Syncthing?
    - fraencko 7y ago
      Also Resilio Sync, formerly known as BitTorrent Sync.
  - mjn 7y ago
    Unison has support for that on some platforms. On Linux, the option "-repeat watch" uses inotify to watch for changes and rerun unison each time there's a change. You can combine that with -auto and some of the options specifying policies for resolving conflicts (e.g. -prefer newer) to get a setup that works without user interaction.
- marcthe12 7y ago
  What the best way to do bidirectional sync using rclone?
  - bloopernova 7y ago
    rclone has a "mount" feature whereby you use FUSE to mount a filesystem which corresponds to a path in your remote share.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Are you aware of Syncthing? What it is seems pretty close to what you'd get if you did that.
JoachimSchipper 7y ago
Pretty hard. Unison is nice, but... - Unison is written in OCaml, which is (probably) a perfectly fine language but not commonly used - Unison synchronizes files to files, but for a Dropbox-like system you really want deduplication for space savings (i.e. server-side storage is a bunch of pointers to content-addressed blocks.) - in general, it's not clear to me that the client is really the hard part of Dropbox. Note e.g. the part where Dropbox now runs its own data centers for cost reasons. - there's a million fiddly things to get right, and Unison hasn't had that much usage
- sedachv 7y ago
  > - Unison synchronizes files to files, but for a Dropbox-like system you really want deduplication for space savings (i.e. server-side storage is a bunch of pointers to content-addressed blocks.) > - in general, it's not clear to me that the client is really the hard part of Dropbox. Note e.g. the part where Dropbox now runs its own data centers for cost reasons. The whole point of Unison is that you do not need a server. And certainly not a server run by a for-profit corporation in the United States of Surveillance.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Erm, with pairwise syncing you still want a "server". I've used unison as my primarily file syncing for a decade, and trying to maintain a spanning tree among partially-available nodes/disks is a pain in the ass. And creating loops means you can't rely on file deletions. I agree it doesn't have to be a corporate-owned, or even corporate-snoopable "cloud" server, and if this is your goal then unison will work well. Also you can trivially solve the dedup using zfs, but I don't think dedup is a killer feature for personal storage. (Better would be a "manual dedup" utility to catch those instances where you copied off the same thing multiple times over the years. I'd appreciate any recommendations here, although writing one seems trivial when I get around to it - calculate recursive sha256sums for every node in the filesystem tree, and look for the biggest matching ones)
    - icebraining 7y ago
LeoPanthera 7y ago
Syncthing is a better choice for a Dropbox-alike. It's what I use. Apart from anything else, Syncthing syncs in real time.
zimbatm 7y ago
I remember being surprised when I found references to Unison in the Dropbox Linux client. This was in the early days, I'm quite sure they rewrote it since. It would be cool to get the full story from a Dropbox employee.

Do you mean rclone or a whole service like Dropbox? (Rclone is pretty amazing, btw) https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/

sansnomme 7y ago
Automated filesync cross-platform. Not git-style manual push pull. More of leave and forget and only intervene when there's a file conflict.
- Nux 7y ago
  Like Syncthing?
  - fraencko 7y ago
    Also Resilio Sync, formerly known as BitTorrent Sync.
- mjn 7y ago
  Unison has support for that on some platforms. On Linux, the option "-repeat watch" uses inotify to watch for changes and rerun unison each time there's a change. You can combine that with -auto and some of the options specifying policies for resolving conflicts (e.g. -prefer newer) to get a setup that works without user interaction.
marcthe12 7y ago
What the best way to do bidirectional sync using rclone?
- bloopernova 7y ago
  rclone has a "mount" feature whereby you use FUSE to mount a filesystem which corresponds to a path in your remote share.

adrianmonk 7y ago

Are you aware of Syncthing? What it is seems pretty close to what you'd get if you did that.

JoachimSchipper 7y ago

Pretty hard. Unison is nice, but... - Unison is written in OCaml, which is (probably) a perfectly fine language but not commonly used - Unison synchronizes files to files, but for a Dropbox-like system you really want deduplication for space savings (i.e. server-side storage is a bunch of pointers to content-addressed blocks.) - in general, it's not clear to me that the client is really the hard part of Dropbox. Note e.g. the part where Dropbox now runs its own data centers for cost reasons. - there's a million fiddly things to get right, and Unison hasn't had that much usage

sedachv 7y ago
> - Unison synchronizes files to files, but for a Dropbox-like system you really want deduplication for space savings (i.e. server-side storage is a bunch of pointers to content-addressed blocks.) > - in general, it's not clear to me that the client is really the hard part of Dropbox. Note e.g. the part where Dropbox now runs its own data centers for cost reasons. The whole point of Unison is that you do not need a server. And certainly not a server run by a for-profit corporation in the United States of Surveillance.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Erm, with pairwise syncing you still want a "server". I've used unison as my primarily file syncing for a decade, and trying to maintain a spanning tree among partially-available nodes/disks is a pain in the ass. And creating loops means you can't rely on file deletions. I agree it doesn't have to be a corporate-owned, or even corporate-snoopable "cloud" server, and if this is your goal then unison will work well. Also you can trivially solve the dedup using zfs, but I don't think dedup is a killer feature for personal storage. (Better would be a "manual dedup" utility to catch those instances where you copied off the same thing multiple times over the years. I'd appreciate any recommendations here, although writing one seems trivial when I get around to it - calculate recursive sha256sums for every node in the filesystem tree, and look for the biggest matching ones)
  - icebraining 7y ago

LeoPanthera 7y ago

Syncthing is a better choice for a Dropbox-alike. It's what I use. Apart from anything else, Syncthing syncs in real time.

zimbatm 7y ago

I remember being surprised when I found references to Unison in the Dropbox Linux client. This was in the early days, I'm quite sure they rewrote it since. It would be cool to get the full story from a Dropbox employee.