Folder+users management is very poor. Look like it made for 3-5 folders for synchronizing, Plus only few letters in webGUI folder name shown.
Imagin team from 5 persons. They all produced projects. Each of them is a writer to his|her own part of project (folder within project). They have central server for be always online and for central back-up.
Folder structure on “Server”:
Projects
Project 1
Folder 1 (Person 1 can write, others only read) (For example it’s Designer)
Folder 2 (Person 2 can write… (For example it’s Civil Engineer)
Folder 3 (… 3…) (For example it’s Electric Engineer)
Folder 4 (…4…) (… Automation Engineer)
Folder 5 (…5…) (… Project manager)
Project 2
…
Project 100
…
Project infinity (can be a lot more then 5)
How I can organized it today (2017-03-19 for history)? On server i should create double rights folders with write and read permissions. After that share them between Persons without mistakes, It;s already 10 folders in webGUI syncthing only for one theoretical project. You can easy imaging that it would be more then 5 persons in team, And more projects then one. Also each of person can have more then 1 computer - plus mobile as minimum. Even without double rights for each folder it huge mount of work and manage it not easy at all.
Acceptable way:
We need instrument that can help with it. Maybe like common table with persons (computers) in axis X and Folders in axis Y. And flags in cells read/write/none. Colors are welcome too.
We need something like flag “add sub-folders of 1 level deeper as selected folders” when we add new folder to syncthing.
Alternative way:
We should see all sub-folder tree and manage rights for sub-folders for each machine (person).
This is mostly the case, yes. I think Syncthing fills that niche quite well. When you get into hundreds of folders and matrices of access permissions I think you’ll probably be happier with something centralized. Owncloud? GitHub? SharePoint? I’m not sure what rocks in that space.
ownCloud - paid today. Free version is, but idea of ownCloud is different. Installation is different. Administration is different. All worse for our targets then Syncthing of course. We have no IT engineer and don’t want. We are divide IT between us. We don’t want be “master of blade” for cut a bred.
GitHub - we have… Our Automation engineer have it for his programs - based on GitBucket. (This is I am, by the way)) ) For others it not useful at all. All those push-pull-tree-merge-comment and so on features not for business at all. Hg (Mercurial) maybe… less numbers of commands, can be decentralized… but the same points - nobody will “push the button”. It should be automatic on background.
SharePoint - “kill me” product for our objectives. It’s rule in corporations (maybe and apologize) - in small company or team it not useful. Better use Bitrix24 if you need a combine.
I am happy with Syncthing, but just spend time for folder manage. Just ask about not so big addition. Maybe it can be plugin or extension… It’s just visualizing of what already in Syncthing. Table with rights.
You know not so lot of soft are useful in small teams. Especially in Engineers (in common, not only IT) community. IT engineers organized and write products only for their needs. I can call only few of products that are useful… Pilot-ICE one of them. It’s do not so lot, but cost a lot. In this area “more or less” soft cost a lot. Normal functionality soft cost a lot more. But teams have no such money or even don’t ready pay in startup period at all and in the same time have no such lot of needs as big companies. Other words it’s free field for soft writers. Syncthing are partly on this field. For me is’t looking good even without folder management but I want and need it. And know that I am not alone in it.
This “not so big addition” is potentially weeks of development time as it does not fit in the current security model, and potentially would require a re-write of a big part of syncthing.
ResilioSync or librevault (which follows the same security model as btsync 1.4 and prior) might be better options for what you are after.
We already have rights of computers for folders, we already have folders with sharing rules. Why we need change core for shown things that hidden in different places already? Maybe somebody spend a weeks for write visualizer… but on Structural Text I will spend few hours maximum for create such page (problem that Syncthing is on Go and I don’t know source of project at all). Variables here, just up and place them on the table by different way as it now.
BTsync - closed code. Paid. Developers not keep their promises.
librevault - alfa. No stable. Who knows what will be after relies? have no clients for mobiles. UPD: Install it, try it. Not so lot of pluses in folder management. My computers just don’t see each other - not stable as I wrote (I can’t use in work at all after that). But like idea (less geek, more confident as Syncthing, more userfriendly…) is looking good.
I think what is being requested is a global matrix for the local device with shares on one axis and devices on the other.
Then you can in theory see who has what access at a glance. I still don’t think this will scale well but may be more scalable than going into each individual folder.
I’m not sure what rocks in that space.