SyncThing Ordering Options Needed

Feature
1

Syncthing needs a way to set the order of the files it Sync’s

Simply adding a newest first option should suffice

Say you have backups being created daily that you want to sync to another location

/FolderA/Backup A1 /FolderA/Backup A2 /FolderA/Backup A3 /FolderB/Backup B1 /FolderB/Backup B2 /FolderB/Backup B3 /FolderC/Backup C1 /FolderC/Backup C2 /FolderC/Backup C3

Each Day the next backup in the series gets created and the oldest backup gets deleted.

Sync thing will continuously cycle through Folders A and B and never Sync folder C

A simple Newest file first option would fix this

Having this one feature would be a life saver for us

Thanks

2

Sorry, why would it never sync folder C? It’s alphabet based, so you already have control over the order.

3

It will never Sync C because it would only cycle through the backups in folders A and B

Once it gets to B there is a new file in A, and the sync engine only cycles through A and B

It never has the time to get to folder C so C never gets touched

4

Well having order doesn’t solve the problem, as you seem to be syncing slower than producing content?

As I’ve said, you can affect the order by renaming the directory.

5

Having order by date would solve the problem

Right now cycling by alphabetical directory produces a situation where the later directories never get touched

Alphabetical order is not the best way to do this

Naming directories to enforce a order is not a good way to handle this

6

I don’t see how any ordering will solve files changing faster than they can be transferred? You can however split it up into multiple folders (the syncthing kind), and they are handled in parallell.

7

Changing the ordering will not make it faster, it will just evenly distribute the syncs

It will make it so that the latest files in all folders have a chance to be sync rather than the unbalanced method of only getting to the top 10% of the files in the alphabetic ordinal system

This not about speed: but even distribution of synchronization operations.

Your alphabetic sequencing algorithm is not optimal

8

I think you should just break your structure down into smaller syncthing folders to make it more parallel and then it will be more fair.

9

That’s hard to do with over 400 folders

10

Agree it’s not brilliant, but I doubt asc or desc would solve the issue. Plus we do rely on the order as this way directories get created prior the content goes in them.

I have a pull request which allows bumping individual files as they are in transfer but that can be quite memory heavy hance hasn’t been merged.