Bounties for feature requests?

General
1

Is there a place to see bounties for Syncthing? Is there such a concept on this project?

a) Would like to see what existing bounties exist, if there are.

b) Would like to see how start bounties

Use case: As a new user of Syncthing I am pretty surprised there is no support to sync individual files. I could go on with a list of why, in my opinion, this is a must have feature but reading archives I get the impression the developers either don’t think it is needed or don’t have the time/interest to implement. Wondering if it is a matter of putting a bounty on the feature.

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2

There is a place for it: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/syncthing/issues

As to your specific request: I wouldn’t hope for much. I mean if you collect enough money to make someone rich, then maybe, but features mostly happen if a dev considers them useful or interesting and they fit in well with Syncthing - none of that is given for single file sharing.

3

Thanks much for the reply. Will check the bounty page, but based on your input and what I have read/seen looks like I may have to find another solution; still pretty surprised the devs don’t understand the need. Probably will end up going back to Unison.

Thanks again.

4

Please give your use case. E.g. what’s preventing you from creating and sharing a directory and placing the single file therein?

5

Thanks for the followup. After my reply gave it some thought and I think this likely is in great part an issue of perception… First let me explain what I think myself and many others perceive when we first come… Then will explain why I think this may be mostly an issue of this not getting explained properly to new users.

My use case: I have 5 machines I need to sync. The folder with individual files that I find an issue with is my home folder. For example a subset of my unison configs

#Files
path = home/francisco/.hgrc
path = home/francisco/.pgpass
path = home/francisco/.vimrc
path = home/francisco/.zshrc
path = home/francisco/.config/xfce4/terminal/terminalrc

Then, I also have folders like

path = home/francisco/.thunderbird
path = home/francisco/.unison
path = home/francisco/Documents
path = home/francisco/Downloads
path = home/francisco/bin

So, when I started to setup Syncthing I did the individual folders and then was trying to figure out how to do the individual files. So, when I went looking all I found was syncthing doesn’t do individual files.

Through finding different posts with the same question and not finding anything in the FAQ was starting to think Syncthing would not work for me.

The perception trap

Syncthing can do files, one just need to sync the folder, exclude everything else and allow the individual files. The trick is, such in the case of the home folder, that one should not do individual folders of folders with mixed individual files and folders like a home folder. One should sync the home folder at the root level, like /home/francisco (or on a Mac /Users/francisco), and then exclude everything and then add the individual files and folders. However, because at the start one is told one has to do folders when starting to setup the home folder one doesn’t tend to think of doing it at the root level of the home folder so then when it comes time to do the individual files one is lost.

So the issue, in my opinion, is that there isn’t an entry in the FAQ and that when someone asks, instead of saying no syncthing can’t do it simply indicate this is how it is done… and even have a little explanation of why it is done… Users don’t really care about internals; they may not even care how the setups needs to be done. Users just want to accomplish a task and figure out how to get it done with the tool. What is, in my opinion, a bit part of the issue when we the explanation begins with Syncthing doesn’t do single files.

So, to conclude, I think that simply adding a section to the FAQ and covering the scenario, specially mentioning the case of a home folder which likely will trip most users of any *nix like operating system may help reduce these repeated questions and also reduce the frustration of developers/long time users seeing the same question asked over and over again.

6

Thanks for taking the time to write this up.

Your explanation showed the problem from my side: When you say you want to share “individual files” you mean something else than a lot of people did in the past. They asked for a sharing mode, where instead of giving a directory path to share, you give a path to a file to share - the opposition is against that. You are looking to selectively share files within a directory, which is already possible with ignore patterns - as you discovered. It even works almost the same way as your unison paths (little different syntax, but still).

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This is why I mentioned this is potentially an issue of perception.I think that many people who ask for that simply don’t know how to ask… So instead of asking how do I do this in Syncthing they phrase it along the lines of how their old program used to do it. Then there is a disconnect between the requester and the person trying to help. In my opinion, likely many of those asking for sharing direct files would not really mind switching to the proper method if explained to them that they can do what they need, it is just different configuration/syntax.

Will check if the documentation takes pull requests and work on something.

Thanks again for reaching out.

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8

By the way, the docs repo is open source too, so you can add this to the FAQ for others in the future to find.

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