Let’s say I have a PC with a huge memory where I download my movies. I put all of my movies in the ‘movies’ folder on the PC.
I also happen to have a tablet with a small memory where I want to watch the movies on.
Hence I share the folder ‘movies’ between my 2 devices through Syncthing.
BUT, since the tablet memory is small I don’t want to keep the whole ‘movies’ folder on the tablet. It would be ideal that I could select from the ‘movies’ folder the movie I want to see, copy it on the tablet, watch it and delete it from the tablet without deleting it from the ‘movies’ folder.
Can I do this without having to edit the .stignore file on the tablet everytime?
I would say no. I’ve got the exact same scenario here, and editing ignores is the most straightforward solution. Of course, you can also use the Web GUI to edit ignore patterns instead of editing the .stignore file directly.
Or you could share an empty folder and just copy the one movie into it before starting to watch. If it’s okay for you to go to the PC for initiating the transfer.
I personally would be careful with this solution unless you’re 100% sure that you’ll always have (local or remote) access to the PC. Otherwise, it’s very easy to end up in a situation, where you’re in a different location, and all you’re left with is the empty folder, with no access to the whole movies library .
You are right but it isn’t much of a problem to not have access to the moves library. I prefer to keep clean the small memory I have on portable devices for the truly important stuff.
Now I’m asking myself, how hard would be to implement features like having a list of the files in the shared folder and making those files “right-clickable” to decide if download or not. I think that would help the project a lot…
There’s already been an unfinished attempt to do that, but it’s not that easy, as you need to maintain both the regular and “clicky” ignore patterns interface at the same time, being able to switch between the two. There was also a massive performance impact when displaying a long list of files (which is also present when using the Restore Versions interface, actually).
What does it mean that you have to maintain the clicky and regular ignore patterns at the same time? Can’t the clicky one just be a proxy for the regular one? I mean you right click on a file listed, select “download on local” and it gets deleted from the regular ignore pattern.
I mean that the user may want to switch between the two different interfaces back and forth, and this is problematic, because the current one supports advanced patterns, including wildcards, ranges, negations, etc. that either can’t be translated into the clicky interface, or it needs to be done dynamically.
This is not the case with something like Dropbox, which simply presents the user with a directory tree to choose from, with no support for the advanced features that are present in Syncthing.
BUT, I think that a lot of “casual” users (like myself for example) could would use something to mimic dropbox.
For example I came up with this idea: there should be a default for folders where (aside the machine you used to put the files in the folder) the .stignore file lists (and ignores) all the files contained. Hence when you want to “download” just a file, you just have to un-ignore it from the list that you already find in the desired folder. And when you are finished with the file you “ignore” it again in the list and delete it. Sorry for the bad english but it isn’t my first language. Ask questions if I wasn’t clear.
Yeah, I understand what you mean, but there’s difference in functionality here, such as that Syncthing doesn’t automatically delete ignored files like that, and I doubt such an automatic deletion would be implemented.
A simple tree-like ignore mechanism would of course be nice to have, especially for non-power users. It’s just that someone needs to have the skills and care enough to sit down and spend hours/days in order to implement the code necessary to make it happen.
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