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Ask Slashdot: How Best To Synchronize Projects Between Shared Drive and PCs?

Posted by timothy on from the phrase-your-answer-in-the-form-of-a-cookie dept.

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."

5 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. stop trying, use git instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    you are welcome

    1. Re:stop trying, use git instead by camperdave · · Score: 5, Informative

      stop trying, use git instead

      ... or one of the many alternatives.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  2. Revision Control? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This sounds like the ramblings of someone who has never heard of revision control.

  3. It's sad by msobkow · · 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.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  4. An analogy. by pclminion · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I'm a contractor. I have a team of carpenters who are tasked with building a house. It seems this is going to require the driving of a large number of nails. My team of carpenters would like to know what sort of tool or mechanism would work best to drive these nails. Right now, we have one guy who holds the nail while another guy hits it with his thermos. This does eventually drive in the nail, but 90% of the time the nail bends, and it's denting our thermoses. I wonder if there exists some genius, super-carpenter bad-ass out there who might be able to suggest a better way."