I use Rainlendar Lite on my four laptops. Its a great calendar program, very feature-rich that sits on your desktop.
I have tried eight ways from Sunday to sync my calendars on Syncthing - but no joy.
Anyone know what the “secret sauce” is - I have tried everything!
Beats me!
Thanks
Robert
(Sleepless in Toronto)
If the software you want to sync stores its data in local files it should be possible although you might have to take care to only keep a database open on one device at a time.
How does this other software work?
This may also not work unless the software has been prepared to make such synchronisation possible. For example, theoretically you should be able to synchronise EML message files in Thunderbird (especially when using POP3), however it doesn’t work, because Thunderbird isn’t aware of the newly added files on the disk, so it doesn’t include them in the index. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true for other software that operates in a similar manner.
Choas, I am not very technical minded, so I don’t know what local files means. I guess I was just hoping that someone had sync’ed Rainlendar already, done all the hard work before me and could walk me thru how to set the data up on Syncthing. I tried setting it various ways till I was blue in the face. It’s not the end of the world; I couldn’t be more pleased with Syncthing overall!
Tomasz, may be right - the data folder, for whatever reason, doesn’t recognize the stignore file. Of course, if you upgrade to Rainlendar Pro, it comes with synchronization. . . .so maybe they have deliberately put a block on third-party programs like Syncthing in order to boost their own sales. You got to watch those Netherlanders - they are a sly bunch! (lol) Robert
After your general insult towards the Dutch, I just had to have a look at Rainlender 
But it looks that you should easily sort yourself out, when I noticed below in the FAQ
Yes, you can. You can just copy everything from Rainlendar’s program folder to the USB memory and create an empty text file called rainlendar2.ini in the same folder where the executable is. This will make Rainlendar2 store the settings and all the events and tasks to its program folder so the data will be on the USB memory too.
To me this indicates …
For the record, glancing over the Rainlender FAQ, you might not even need Syncthing whatsoever, as you could use Google or any iCal instead. (Well, maybe that will not sync settings, tasks, etc, etc).
How can I synchronize my calendar between computers?
Rainlendar Pro has several options for the sharing the calendars on a network.
You can use Rainlendar to store the events to Google Calendar which allows you to access them also from Google’s web calendar.
You can use a 3rd party service provider (e.g. iCal Exchange) to publish your calendars online.
If you have your own server you can also set up a webdav or ftp server and store the calendar to there.
I think the important question is whether you can keep running the application on multiple devices at the same time, and still sync their data in real time.
Sledge - thanks for this. I will look at this more closely shortly. I do want to stay within the Synthing network on this and not use any other application. However, I am not very computer-savvy so things like “making the install portable” are GREEK to me (no offence meant to the wonderful people of Greece). The real frustration to me is that whenever I set up Rainlendar to sync on Syncthing, I lose all my Rainlendar settings and I have to start all over again to reconfigure Railendar, and its about a 20-minute laborious process. So I am growing wearing of even trying anything again. So you know, Rainlendar2 is run out of my Program Files. The data (ini file, etc) are located in a .rainlendar2 folder in my Users Directory (if that makes any sense). I don’t like messing with my Program Files - I am too afraid of screwing anything up. I will explain more later, I am tied up on a work matter at moment. Thanks Robert
After noticing that Rainlendar’s FAQ mentioning ICS, I took a look at the Windows install.
Rainlendar stores event data in .ics files, with the default one located at the following path:
%HOMEPATH%\.rainlendar2\Default.ics
(In Windows, the %HOMEPATH% environment variable points to a user’s home folder – e.g. C:\Users\Robertlaw)
Likewise, Rainlendar’s settings are stored in:
%HOMEPATH%\.rainlendar2\rainlendar2.ini
At a basic level, having Syncthing mirror the %HOMEPATH%\.rainlendar2 folder between your laptops would do it.
However, as @tomasz86 pointed out, whether or not Rainlendar plays nice is a different story. A quick test showed that Rainlendar loads Default.ics into memory and updates it whenever events change.
Rainlendar doesn’t appear to watch for external changes to its ICS file, so if laptop “A” saves a change ➛ Syncthing pushes the updated ICS file to laptop “B” ➛ and laptop “B” has Rainlendar already running and saves its own changes, it’ll wipe out changes from laptop “A”.
In order for Rainlendar to see external edits to its ICS file, the “Refresh” menu item in its Windows System Tray icon must be clicked to trigger a reload.
So the caveats are:
Rainlendar Pro manages sync by using a CalDAV server, which is designed for exchanging ICS data.
Would check-mark “Monitor changes” work at Options → CALENDARS → Settings?
Gadget - thanks. Its getting late here. I will follow your instructions on this tomorrow. And let you know how I get on. Thanks Robert
SN - I see Monitor changes in settings. I will try that tomorrow as well. Thanks, loads Robert
Enabling “Monitor changes” does cause Rainlendar to auto-reload its ICS file, but unfortunately can result in a greater chance of hitting a race condition.
Because Syncthing downloads changes and reconstructs an updated file as a temporary file before moving it into place, it won’t directly interfere with Rainlendar saving changes, but Rainlendar could save changes only for Syncthing to overwrite Rainlendar’s updated ICS file a split second later. Then when Rainlendar detects that its ICS file has been changed (by Syncthing), it auto-reloads it, wiping out the data stored in memory.
Rainlendar’s monitor changes feature doesn’t appear to include the ability to merge changes in memory with those changed externally using the UID field for each entry as a reference.
Gadget/SN - Thank you for your kind assistance. Unfortunately, after several further attempts, I have still not managed to successfully sync Rainlendar and have now decided to call it a day. Syncthing works wonderfully on my other folders and files for which I am immensely grateful; not being able to extend syncing to my calendar program is a small price to pay. Thanks again for your assistance. Best wishes Robert
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