dtsync

DTSync

This is a two-way directory synchronizer similar to Unison and designed as a possible replacement. Read my blog post for an overview.

More precisely, it is two things at the same time:

• An algorithm that detects differences between two abstract trees. Currently, it only detects added, updated and removed files (and directories). A wishlist item is that it should also detect moves and hardlinks (two closely related things).
• A file synchronizer implemented using this algorithm. Many replicas can be synchronized in a mesh form, with updates propagating from one replica to all the others.

Many of the ideas behind the algorithm are taken from something called concise version vectors. If you want to understand the algorithm here, first read up on version vectors, then come back to read the paper. For more background and a hopefully easier-to-grasp explanation, read my blog post about the algorithm.

Unison was the big inspiration for dtsync, and you should probably use it instead if you don't run into it's limitations as it is much better tested.

Goals and features of DTSync over other synchronization tools like Unison, Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync:

• Synchronize an arbitrary number of replicas in two directions, without central coordination or need to reach those replicas. Without false positives (or false negatives) in the conflict detection algorithm.
• Be rock-solid.
• Support less common file types like symlinks that some systems don't support.
• Run on any platform. Be as versatile as the venerable rsync. Certainly don't require a GUI or a particular desktop environment as part of the core program. At the same time, don't lock to the CLI like rsync did.
• Do not have some central storage or coordination server. Do not depend on a fast internet speed, for that matter. That means, synchronize directly between endpoints instead of going through a central server.
• Do not impose arbitrary limits on file sizes.

The major inspiration of course comes from rsync and Unison, as you might have guessed by now.

To actually make something useful I had to limit myself in what features to add initially. I hope to lift these restrictions in the future.

• There is no rename/move support. This is something I would really like to have, as it can make synchronization a lot faster and even prevent some conflicts.
• There is no hardlink support. This is something I don't care so much about, but hardlinks must be taken into account for proper move support (using inode numbers). No hardlink support means that hardlinks are ignored. DTSync will work just fine with hardlinks, but they'll simply be broken on any update.
• As there is many-way update detection anyway via a distributed algorithm, it shouldn't be too hard to add 3-way (or even n-way) synchronization. Bringing me to the next point...
• When there is 3-way synchronization, it might be possible to implement a merge algorithm. For example, consider two ZIP files. They may both be updated, but the updates itself may be for separate files. With a third replica in the mix, we can detect which files these are and merge the changes. Taking this a bit further, we might actually automatically merge any text document via diff and patch. Or even .odt or .docx files: they're just a bunch of XML files inside ZIP files that should be fairly straightforward (but certainly not easy!) to merge.

Installing

Installing is quite simple if you have golang installed. Just run the following command:

go get github.com/aykevl/dtsync/dtsync

The resulting dtsync binary will be stored in your $HOME/bin directory.

You will need a few dependencies:

• The Go compiler.
• librsync-dev
• GObject-introspection for Python 3 (see Installing). This is only needed for the GTK3 frontend.

The GTK3 frontend can be found in $HOME/src/github.com/aykevl/dtsync/gtk/dtsync.py. It needs the dtsync binary in your search path ($PATH), which will often be the case after installing dtsync inside ~/bin. If not, you can add it. For example, in bash:

PATH=$PATH:~/bin python3 ~/src/github.com/aykevl/dtsync/gtk/dtsync.py

Package overview

To make the whole system a bit more modular, I've split the software in various packages:

Program flow

The main flow of using dtsync is as follows, very similar to Unison:

• Scan a pair of replicas (directories on a filesystem). These can be local, remote, or both.
• Reconcile both trees that have diverged since the last sync. If this is the first synchronization, all files only on one side are seen as new and all files on both sides that differ are seen as conflicts.
• Present a list of changes, or 'jobs' to apply. For each file or directory, The UI lists the modification state on each side (unmodified, updated, new, deleted, etc.). Also a direction is presented: from updated to unmodified, from new to nonexistent, or from nonexistent to unmodified. The algorithm is conservative: it won't by default present a direction for anything that isn't obvious. E.g. two modified files won't have a default direction.
• The user can now choose what to do with that list. For each job, the direction can be set to left-to-right, right-to-left, or pass/ignore.
• As nearly the last step, the sync can be applied. All jobs that aren't set to pass will be applied, usually a bunch at the same time (8 jobs at the same time at the time of writing this).
• The last step is that both replicas will be marked as 'finished', and incorporating all changes from the other replica. That is, if all changes are applied.

Issues

This tool seems to be stable, although unfinished. I am not aware of any issues that will eat your data. I use it for some of my synchronization needs. But be careful to check what it does exactly.

Things that are left to do, roughly in order of importance:

• Add proper profile support. There is some initial support, but it needs to be expanded to all other options currently stored inside .dtsync files.
• Properly deal with errors. Often they'll completely stop the synchronization. The UI must clearly indicate what went wrong so the user can either fix it, or maybe it'll be fixed on a second synchronization.
• Deal with incomplete syncs. Mark the files that haven't completed synchronization as such, so that future syncs can use the correct version vector for the files and prevent false positives in conflict handling.
• Some performance optimization. Investigate alternatives like sha256 for hashing, as such algorithms tend to have better hardware support.
• Add many more options, as needed, so dtsync will be a better competitor to Unison.