Finally! A symlink is a file like any other. You don't want sync software going off and "thinking" about what a symlink really means, anymore than you'd want sy

Finally! A symlink is a file like any other. You don't want sync software going off and "thinking" about what a symlink really means, anymore than you'd want sync software going off and "thinking" after finding porn on your computer. It is a user's responsibility to insure that a symlink is useful across sync'd computers, or to ignore the symlink. A good test case is a MacOS Application Package. These often have internal symlinks that most users never notice, e.g. from "current" to a version of included software. A sync program that replaces the symlink with its contents simply bloats such an application, but it still works. A sync program that ignores a symlink breaks the application. In either case the mistake is "thinking" about the symlink rather than treating it like any other file. There's still only one sync program that I know of that handles every issue like this correctly: Unison, written by a prominent computer scientist with astute community feedback. This is collectively a smarter brain trust than the sanctimonious support folks who have resisted my feedback at various sync software companies, sure that their unique approach is correct. Not only does Unison correctly handle symlinks, it also has a notion of an "atomic" directory, so that one doesn't for example hose a git archive modified at both ends, or a sparse disk image modified at both ends. I use DropBox when I need the integration, to iOS or sharing with others. I sync the guts of each machine, for my private work, using Unison.