Months ago, I saw the discussion in #6848 says the syncthing might change the default marker folder name from .stfolder into .syncthing and put the default backup folder .stfolder into it.
I was really looking forward to this improvement, cause when I use cleaning apps to clear unuseful cache folders, I always forget to uncheck deleting empty folders (that’s also most normal people do), so that .stfolder gets deleted, and errors in syncthing popup. And this error is a deadly drawback for those normal non English-speaker users, cause understanding the error reading the mannual then find the solution is like crossing the Himalaya to them.
I know you might say Normal users should never use those stupid cleaning apps and stay the damn away from the folders they don’t know. The thing is, just because users don’t know what are those folders with strange name, they are afraid of deleting wrong folders, so that they turn to cleaning apps instead of manually deleting garbage folders when storage has little space, and normally, empty folders are usually garbage folders left by some uninstalled apps. It’s normal people’s storage get full, it’s normal they turn to Cleaning apps to clean disk garbages, it’s normal that most Cleaning apps delets empty folders by default, it’s absolutelly normal people use default cleaning settings. In my opinion, syncthing is designed to be used by users, so it might suppose to have default settings make people less making mistakes.
So if the default folder marker could upgrade as said above, it would be really elegant. I’m honestly looking forward to this change.
Since the pull request is closed for idling over 90 days, I wanna ask about this.
The pull request wouldn’t have changed anything for you, it was about renaming .stfolder to .syncthing, because that’s easier to recognise as belonging to Syncthing. The directory would have stayed empty.
Whether or not we should put a useless file into the marker directory is a different question. It would be a bit ironic though if we did create a useless file to accommodate people that feel so strongly about garbage that they use overzealous cleaning apps.
Any program that is deleting folders simply because they seem empty needs to be fixed so that it stops behaving so dangerously. If you need to save single kilobytes of free space then you’re well beyond any “cleaning” script.
I think a better idea is to provide a interface to chang the default value of the popup when adding a new sync file, and store those value in syncthing config file, so that users can change these default value they don’t like into their prefered value once for all.
If the syncthing markor folder changed into ‘.syncthing’, will the default version golder .stversions folder be put in it? Cause I think it’s way more tidy than two syncthing folder and I this change no harm to user experience.
Actually talking about this theme is pretty hard. Because top tech guys are hard to desigh and improve the interactive and usage experience at the view of a non-tech normal user.