Files matching (?d) rule aren't deleted

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Actually now that I have found the comment I was talking about, I think this is something different. Everything is working as expected, but the way it’s intended to work isn’t ideal. The following should reproduce the “problem”:

  1. Devices A and B have the same file at foo/bar, device A has ignore pattern bar.
  2. On A foo is deleted -> Syncthing marks foo as deleted and sends that info to B - it doesn’t do anything about foo/bar, as it’s ignored.
  3. B tries to get in sync, thus tries to delete foo but correctly realizes that there is still foo/bar.

Result: Pull error Puller (folder "label" (id), file "foo/bar"): delete dir: directory is not empty.

Firstly the error could mention that this is likely due to different ignore patterns between devices. However even if this is clear to the user, there are two ways forward:

  1. The file should also be ignored and deleted on B -> add (?d)bar to ignore patterns - problem solved.

  2. The file should actually be kept -> you need to touch foo/bar for it to be updated - that’s not user friendly.

Alternatives for 2 (none of them seem practical to me):

  • Automatically recreate the parent directory. Seems weird because from the point of view of A, that means it deletes a directory and Syncthing just silently recreates it without anything in it.
  • Ditch directories aka consider them just as a means to store file in, don’t actively sync them - that’s overkill for such a fringe case.

The only realistic idea I have is to add a link to the error message pointing to a FAQ question in the docs explaining the issue.

@calmh @AudriusButkevicius

?d: "directory has been deleted on a remote device but is not empty; the contents are probably ignored on that remote device, but not locally"
delete dir: directory is not empty