Ask Slashdot: How Best To Synchronize Projects Between Shared Drive and PCs? 238
Koookiemonster writes "Our company has many projects, each one with a folder on a Samba drive (Z:\). Our problem is syncing only the programmers' current projects (~30 at any time) between Z:\ and their C:\Projects\-folder on five Windows 7 laptops. If we sync the whole Z:\-drive, our projects folders would be filled with too many subfolders, making it difficult to navigate. The folders contain OpenPCS projects (PLC) and related files (Word, Excel, PDF documents); a common project folder is 50 MB. Is there any easy to use, low-budget sync software with scripting, so that we could e.g. only sync folders that exist locally?" (Read more details, below, of what Koookiemonster is looking for.)
"Many programs do support selective sync, but choosing what to sync is awkward; projects and who works on them change daily. It is important that subscribing to a project is as easy as copying it from Z:\ to C:\projects\. The Z:\-folder with all of our current and past projects is located on a desktop PC running Ubuntu Linux. It can share files e.g. via Samba or FTP. All PCs are on the same (W)LAN. Off-site backups of Z:\ are taken care of via rsync. The company has three programmers, who usually handle their own projects alone, but very often others need to add files to projects. Bigger projects need more programmers. Currently we use FreeFileSync with a custom piece of Javascript to make batch files that synchronize e.g. folders C:\projects\123_ProjectName\ and Z:\123_ProjectName\ if the local folder exists. However, that solution lacks versioning, real-time sync and deletion support. It only syncs when we press a button, and then older files are overwritten by newer files (two way sync; older files go to a "sync-deletions"-folder).PS. Bonus points for solutions that allow renaming project folders without renaming them on all laptops."
stop trying, use git instead (Score:5, Insightful)
you are welcome
Re:Revision Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stop trying, use git instead (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct answer almost on the first post, nice work ("svn" would also have been acceptable.)
TFA is describing a horrible clusterfuck that must be replaced with proper revision control. You don't build on top of this, you KILL IT WITH FIRE!
It's sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad to see an entire team of supposedly "professional" developers which have never heard of version control.
You can't even blame it on the Windows environment -- MSVS supports hooks for several version control systems either natively or through plugins/addons.
This whole story just reeks of some manager saying "We can't afford to set that up -- it would take too much time" any time someone has suggested it.
Because I flat out refuse to believe the entire team doesn't know any better.
Re:stop trying, use git instead (Score:4, Insightful)
That's truel However I definitely have seen the syndrome of people not acknowledging software not created by Microsoft, or asking for bizarre or counterproductive requirements (sharepoint). Most Unix users who don't understand this stuff at least tend to follow along with whatever the team uses or project manager suggests.