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As far as I can tell, Dropbox has actually solved the desktop file-sync problem. It's the first sync product of its kind that I've used that works out-of-box.

As far as I can tell, Dropbox has actually solved the desktop file-sync problem. It's the first sync product of its kind that I've used that works out-of-box. Yes, sync is hard. Where I think things fail is mainly around user experience. You just have to make smart decisions and let users recover if they see something they don't expect. Dropbox does this quite well. I learned this when I was at Microsoft on the ActiveSync team -- we actually were trounced by RIM not because our sync was worse (it was probably superior) but because we initially made the mistake of OVER-reporting status (even minor conflicts that normally you would want to just ignore.) Sync should be a silent, no/very little UI experience -- a utility that just works in the background. Any attempt to make it more than that will cause the product to fail miserably.

dryicerx 17y ago
Regarding Sync should be Silent, In a perfect world it would be so, but this is far from it. There is no way to automate this conflict resolution for binary files (if the same file is modified in two places). You can simply pick the latest modified version, but this is less than optimal (the other modifications will be lost then). Even dropbox isn't totally silent, in a conflict such as this, their server keeps revisions (so you can pick and choose the correct one, making it not silent). Silent Sync (in a automated no-user-interaction way) has , is, and always be a dream (at least for the foreseeable future).
- sachinag 17y ago
  But this is exactly where Dropbox is genius. They just keep both files - they don't scream at you that there's a conflict. In the case that you open up a file and it's not quite right, you're going to look into it. You'll find the alternate file and then copy/paste your changes in. Then you'll re-save and ta-da, you're OK. But there are going to be all sorts of situations where you'll have minor conflicts, and the user will never, ever notice.
  - jgmorard 17y ago
    SugarSync also does just that: the file is duplicated and the user is left to resolve the conflict at a later time. Actually it does that in a really clever way so that if users keep editing over the already conflicting versions, it doesn't create new conflict versions but rather treats the new files as further versions of existing conflict duplicates...
sachmanb 17y ago
dropbox would be perfect if i could use my own private server
- windsurfer 17y ago
  If someone could put the drop-box GUI on the git content tracker backend...

dryicerx 17y ago

Regarding Sync should be Silent, In a perfect world it would be so, but this is far from it. There is no way to automate this conflict resolution for binary files (if the same file is modified in two places). You can simply pick the latest modified version, but this is less than optimal (the other modifications will be lost then). Even dropbox isn't totally silent, in a conflict such as this, their server keeps revisions (so you can pick and choose the correct one, making it not silent). Silent Sync (in a automated no-user-interaction way) has , is, and always be a dream (at least for the foreseeable future).

sachinag 17y ago
But this is exactly where Dropbox is genius. They just keep both files - they don't scream at you that there's a conflict. In the case that you open up a file and it's not quite right, you're going to look into it. You'll find the alternate file and then copy/paste your changes in. Then you'll re-save and ta-da, you're OK. But there are going to be all sorts of situations where you'll have minor conflicts, and the user will never, ever notice.
- jgmorard 17y ago
  SugarSync also does just that: the file is duplicated and the user is left to resolve the conflict at a later time. Actually it does that in a really clever way so that if users keep editing over the already conflicting versions, it doesn't create new conflict versions but rather treats the new files as further versions of existing conflict duplicates...

sachmanb 17y ago

dropbox would be perfect if i could use my own private server

windsurfer 17y ago
If someone could put the drop-box GUI on the git content tracker backend...