johnmarshall4

There is a pretty thorough explanation of how the syntax works at the bottom of this thread: http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/14260-syncignore-is-great-but/

@peadair - I've made the same request. I'd really like to reduce the number of tools I have running to keep everything in sync. I am syncing data between machines. I also want to sync data to an external drive for additional backup. Today that means running BTSync and also some other folder mirroring software. The thought was that since they already had folder monitoring, sync, merge logic etc. they could just add local sync as well. But it doesn't sound like it will happen. The only solution seems to be to get a cheap NAS that will run BTSync and move your external HDD to it.

Yeah, we need to come up with a clear example to explain what it does. Unfortunately my examples seems to compare it to other services which people might not know about either: "Think of it as AeroFS or Cubby DirectSync only built on top of Torrent technology." Also beware of the Trolls (Why not just use RSync?), they can suck up a lot of time. Anyhow I'm sure BT appreciates all the efforts you put into evangelizing their product.

Happy for BT. Not looking forward to all the noise that is about to hit the forums though.

I'd like to see BitTorrent work with hardware NAS vendors and products like Space Moneky and Transporter to integrate BTSync out of the box.

@PeterVerhees I also like this idea. I'd like to be able to use some spare space at a friends house as a secure store. Understanding how BTSync works and the issues with socket based encryption vs. file system encryption - I doubt that this would be that easy for them. I'll put a vote for it none the less. I know that you want to avoid encrypting at the sending end, but if you wanted something that worked right now you should be able to have your brother point BtSync at a TrueCrypt volume and then send you a read only secret. My understanding is that BTSync already supports sending deltas from changes in a TrueCrypt volume. Of course if BT do decide to support something like this you would want to be able to set a file size quota on a share so that they don't hog your entire drive.

@knireis - i'm having similar problems because of interaction with other software on the receiving end. I'd definitely contact bittorrent support if you haven't already to help track this down.

To start I'll list the constraints we are working with. BTSync is not Dropbox - there is no 'cloud' store. So there needs to be at least one machine running with a copy of your shares in order to access files. (Obvious I know, but just listing it) Mobile devices have limited storage so normal 'full' sync probably couldn't work. iOS apps are sandboxed - so a normal sync behavior wouldn't be useful on that platform anyway. Mobile devices are on intermittent / inconsistent connections. Mobile devices have data plans with file transfer limits. Mobile devices have power constraints that need to be considered. So given the limitations, I'd say full sync peer behavior is off the table. I'd like to use a mobile BTSync app primarily to automatically copy my photos and videos to a share on my computer. A close second would be to browse files on a computer share (assuming it was left on) and view / stream them on demand. Here is a list of features I'd like to see: Automatic push of new photos and videos to a designated share or specific folder in a share. I would not call this sync as deleting the originals from my phone's camera roll should not remove them from the share. [*]Option to restrict to auto push of photos / videos to wifi only. [*]Browsing through the file / folder list of any share. [*]On demand view or play of any supported file. [*]Flag, pin or 'favorite' specific files for offline storage. [*]Ability to download and send files via email. [*]Ability to download and copy photos to my camera roll. [*]Built in music player for navigating and streaming a music collection. Would need some smart caching behavior, but not a permanent copy of the files. [*]Built in photo / slide show viewer for navigating folders of photos. [*]Built in Video player for streaming video files (in formats supported by the device of course) [*]Built in document viewer (.pdf, word, excel, pages etc)

That's great!

I don't want to open this whole discussion back up, but I would like to suggest that the BitTorrent folks at least consider supporting nested shares. There are plenty of valid reasons for using them, and I'm sure the potential 'problems' could be solved inside the sync app itself without having to resort to manual hacks and work-arounds. I sure could use nested shares right now. I have a large folder of media that I sync between local machines. I periodically want to sync individual sub-folders to external machines and today I have to copy all that data somewhere else before I can setup a new share. Tough on disk space.

Where are these options to turn off encryption and use TCP? I don't see them in my clients.

Yes but then the other device still contains the old deleted files. What would be needed is to do a one-way sync initially to make the remote device match the 'up-to-date' folder, then revert back to two-way sync. - I think this could be hard to explain from a UI / usability point of view though.

Selective Sync I would like better control of what syncs on various devices without always having to create a bunch of separate shares (secrets). This is the kind of implementation I imagine: 1. Under the folder preferences you would have an option for selective sync. 2. By default, selective sync would be off. Any new sub-folders added on a remote device would be automatically be synced (today's behavior). 3. If selective sync were turned on there would be a check list of sub-folders available for the user to select to be synced. **Any new sub-folders added on a remote device would NOT automatically be synced. The user would have to modify the folder preferences again and check the new folder. This would be very helpful to me in the case where I have remote devices at a different location, but some of them don't have a lot of space. I could add additional folders of files to an existing share and get the sync started on the 'normal' machines without filling up the 'limited' devices. Today I have to do this with different shares. Note: that .syncignore will not give me this functionality, I want 'opt-in' to folders when enabled. Currently .syncignore requires modifications on all the devices to opt-out.

So are you hinting that we will have a way to ignore specific files in a sync folder?

I can't wait.

Looks like what is really needed here is selective sync - like Dropbox, AeroFS and others. - Let you choose which sub-directories under a given share to sync. - I'd vote for that.

I don't think it would help to share it. On the Mac you have to dig into the ~/Library.... sync.dat file and do a bunch of script-FU. I'm sure it is fragile and will break in future versions.

Nevermind. Figured it out. (Not in the .SyncId).

I would like to be able to get the folder secret from the .SyncId file so I could use it in some automated scripts. Is this possible?

Does this mean you fixed things at your end? Or is there a new client app to download?

Issues I'm still seeing: - Empty folders are not synced. So if I create a folder structure but don't populate it, it doesn't show up on the remote end. - Moved / deleted folders are not cleaned up on the remote end.

I don't think anyone would mind if you mentioned them here. What do you recommend for syncing between local drives? I could use that.

Yeah this was the first problem I noticed - I moved some folders and the old ones were left behind on the remote machines. Other than that, it is working great so far.