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If I remember right, the Dropbox folder is originally ~/Dropbox anyway, right? You can't just sync arbitrary stuff in your home folder using it without getting

If I remember right, the Dropbox folder is originally ~/Dropbox anyway, right? You can't just sync arbitrary stuff in your home folder using it without getting into symlinks in the first place.

pancrufty 4y ago
That’s right. I think people forget now Dropbox works. It mentions this in the linked document, it explicitly says you have to recreate the links. But no, downvote the people who know how to read instead.
AlexandrB 4y ago
For a less technically-savvy user there's a big difference between "my spreadsheet is in the Dropbox folder" vs. "my spreadsheet is in Library/CloudStorage". Especially when the "~/Library" folder is hidden by default.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  In fairness, I think these new "file providers" show up the Finder sidebar by default.
- pancrufty 4y ago
  Less technically-savvy people don’t know what you’re talking about. It still looks like a folder in the sidebar.
kccqzy 4y ago
Dropbox used to work perfectly fine with symlinks. But they sent me an email in December 2019 titled "Dropbox is changing how we work with symlinks" which is a euphemism for Dropbox no longer supporting symlinks. That's when I stopped using it.
- codetrotter 4y ago
  What about hard links? For example let’s say you want to sync all of ~/Movies, could you hardlink ~/Movies into ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Movies and it would work? I don’t use Dropbox so I don’t know, but maybe someone knows?
  - kccqzy 4y ago
    Directory hard links are unusual and Apple only implemented it for Time Machine. It was never really well supported on macOS to begin with. Apple removed it from APFS.
  - oefrha 4y ago
    It works, and I used to have a script to rsync certain directories into the Dropbox folder as hardlinks (I can exclude shit like node_modules that way). Not directory hardlinks, but rsync’s --link-dest, so that each individual file is a hardlink. Anyway, I stopped using Dropbox long ago. Edit: Parent is talking about directory hardlinks, so no.
- zinodaur 4y ago
  it stopped syncing symlinks to other machines - but you could still do what the parent was describing
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  >Dropbox is changing how we work with symlinks God I hate this particular headlining strategy. Can't use any negative words whatsoever. Always have to pretend it's just "a change". But new features are always given top billing on the headline. So now I just assume any vaguely worded headline is to be interpreted in the worst possible light.

If I remember right, the Dropbox folder is originally ~/Dropbox anyway, right? You can't just sync arbitrary stuff in your home folder using it without getting into symlinks in the first place.

pancrufty 4y ago

That’s right. I think people forget now Dropbox works. It mentions this in the linked document, it explicitly says you have to recreate the links. But no, downvote the people who know how to read instead.

AlexandrB 4y ago

For a less technically-savvy user there's a big difference between "my spreadsheet is in the Dropbox folder" vs. "my spreadsheet is in Library/CloudStorage". Especially when the "~/Library" folder is hidden by default.

nicoburns 4y ago
In fairness, I think these new "file providers" show up the Finder sidebar by default.
pancrufty 4y ago
Less technically-savvy people don’t know what you’re talking about. It still looks like a folder in the sidebar.

kccqzy 4y ago

Dropbox used to work perfectly fine with symlinks. But they sent me an email in December 2019 titled "Dropbox is changing how we work with symlinks" which is a euphemism for Dropbox no longer supporting symlinks. That's when I stopped using it.

codetrotter 4y ago
What about hard links? For example let’s say you want to sync all of ~/Movies, could you hardlink ~/Movies into ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Movies and it would work? I don’t use Dropbox so I don’t know, but maybe someone knows?
- kccqzy 4y ago
  Directory hard links are unusual and Apple only implemented it for Time Machine. It was never really well supported on macOS to begin with. Apple removed it from APFS.
- oefrha 4y ago
  It works, and I used to have a script to rsync certain directories into the Dropbox folder as hardlinks (I can exclude shit like node_modules that way). Not directory hardlinks, but rsync’s --link-dest, so that each individual file is a hardlink. Anyway, I stopped using Dropbox long ago. Edit: Parent is talking about directory hardlinks, so no.
zinodaur 4y ago
it stopped syncing symlinks to other machines - but you could still do what the parent was describing
kmeisthax 4y ago
>Dropbox is changing how we work with symlinks God I hate this particular headlining strategy. Can't use any negative words whatsoever. Always have to pretend it's just "a change". But new features are always given top billing on the headline. So now I just assume any vaguely worded headline is to be interpreted in the worst possible light.