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Being non-mountable isn't a core good feature. It's a serious deficiency. If you want to store locally and sync so you can work offline, this is only one of a

Being non-mountable isn't a core good feature. It's a serious deficiency. If you want to store locally and sync so you can work offline, this is only one of about a hundred solutions. It just happens to be one that also allows you to use the file directly, that keeps your data secure and private (unlike Dropbox), etc.

jamesgeck0 15y ago
Unfortunately, an offline syncable folder is the core feature of Dropbox, and anything that doesn't have it isn't, by itself, a Dropbox equivalent. Of the hundred solutions you mentioned, could you recommend a few that will automatically sync files in the background as they are changed with versioning/conflict resolution that don't choke on large files? I haven't found any which perform the task satisfactorily. Edit: Tone is not intended to be antagonistic; I'd genuinely love to know what you use for this. :-)
- CPlatypus 15y ago
  It sounds like you've had some bad experiences and I don't know which projects address those specific issues, but personally I've had good luck with Unison. Somebody else pointed me toward lsyncd which seems to take an interesting (inotify-based) approach which might meet your "in the background" requirement better, but I don't have any experience with it. I know there are lots of others, with varying levels of maturity and "intelligence" regarding things like conflicts and moves/renames, but it's such a crowded field that I don't claim to be an expert. My attitude is generally is that if you start with something that can be used live then it's trivial to use it for syncing instead, whereas something that's originally designed for syncing might never go the other way. Right now I just rsync to the remote directory, then from it, whenever I feel like. I could automate the process, or replace rsync with something more sophisticated, but my focus is mostly on the remote-infrastructure side because that's where I see a dearth of suitable alternatives.

jamesgeck0 15y ago

Unfortunately, an offline syncable folder is the core feature of Dropbox, and anything that doesn't have it isn't, by itself, a Dropbox equivalent. Of the hundred solutions you mentioned, could you recommend a few that will automatically sync files in the background as they are changed with versioning/conflict resolution that don't choke on large files? I haven't found any which perform the task satisfactorily. Edit: Tone is not intended to be antagonistic; I'd genuinely love to know what you use for this. :-)

CPlatypus 15y ago
It sounds like you've had some bad experiences and I don't know which projects address those specific issues, but personally I've had good luck with Unison. Somebody else pointed me toward lsyncd which seems to take an interesting (inotify-based) approach which might meet your "in the background" requirement better, but I don't have any experience with it. I know there are lots of others, with varying levels of maturity and "intelligence" regarding things like conflicts and moves/renames, but it's such a crowded field that I don't claim to be an expert. My attitude is generally is that if you start with something that can be used live then it's trivial to use it for syncing instead, whereas something that's originally designed for syncing might never go the other way. Right now I just rsync to the remote directory, then from it, whenever I feel like. I could automate the process, or replace rsync with something more sophisticated, but my focus is mostly on the remote-infrastructure side because that's where I see a dearth of suitable alternatives.