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RSyncUI – A SwiftUI based macOS GUI for rsync

lproven

My main Mac can't run Sonoma without OCLP and I'm perfectly happy on Monterey for now, so I will skip.

I already have RSyncOSX, which after quite a bit of Googling and digging seems to be an older app by the same author.

https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived

As opposed to the new:

https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX

Before that, I used to use ARsync:

https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/

https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-g...

It was, as I recall, nicer still but it's no longer maintained and the x86-32 binary no longer runs.

mhw

A related tool that I've found useful over the years is Unison [1]. Think of it as rsync where you can interactively adjust the reconciliation algorithm between the two sides of the sync connection. It stores a hash of the file contents from the previous run for each file, so it can work out whether each side has changed since the last run. It then presents you with a GUI (or TUI) to review and adjust the reconciliation.

For the periods of my career where I've lived the two computer life (desktop and laptop), I've used Unison to keep substantial parts of my home directory in sync between the two machines.

[1]: https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison

AnonC

This seems quite useful to me. Since I use rsync for specific purposes that tend to be used repeatedly (but not changing environments/purposes), it always requires a little bit of reading the manual and/or searching online plus some trial and error to figure out the parameters (with a dry run).

BTW, the documentation [1] mentions installing a newer version of rsync using Homebrew. I’d suggest including Macports rsync [2], which also provides 3.x (right now at 3.4.1).

[1]: https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/

[2]: https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/

HeckFeck

Looks very good. I'm glad to see more things happening in SwiftUI - proper desktop apps are not gone yet!

w10-1

Sorry, I noticed the XPC code is the generic to add numbers. Unused?

And the application is not sandboxed?[1]

The trick with an app like this is the risk of launching an external process, or building the app to include the binaries, thus avoiding some security risk (and possibly using XPC for inter-op updates).

Would you like to summarize how you identified and addressed the risks, and your approach for building/bundling/deploying the app?

[1] https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncU...

dmarinus

I don't like GUIs for this so I made a simple cli frontend for rsync/rclone so I can just run pull/push in a directory like git. https://github.com/meeuw/rzn

Bender

Nice. It would be nifty if this could also front-end LFTP. Using the mirror subsystem LFTP can replicate the behavior of rsync in a chroot sftp-only environment which I use heavily when I do not wish to give people a shell. If there was a UI it would be easier to help less technical people to use LFTP.

joshstrange

I’d love to see something similar for Rclone!

davidcollantes

Rclone comes with a web GUI now. See https://rclone.org/gui/. Granted, not native, not as polished, but fairly functional.

whalesalad

rclone is magical software

MortyWaves

Are there any good rsync GUIs for Windows?

rzzzt

I used QtdSync for a while (in differential mode which uses hardlinks on NTFS): https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en

At some point I forgot about the scheme and started synchronizing things manually.

tyingq

Rsync is pretty closely tied to unixy concepts of permissions, paths, access times, etc. You can find some rsync based tools for Windows, but IMO, it's a square peg / round hole unless you're using it inside of WSL.

blue_pants

robocopy is the Windows equivalent of rsync

huhtenberg

Kinda, sorta. Robocopy is a very good tool, but it cannot do incremental file updates. Already mentioned bvckup2 can do deltas, but it's not an rsync client.

tomovo

I use Bvckup2 for doing Windows backups; it's commercial but works really well for me.

encom

Windows has rsync?

MortyWaves

rsync is a library.

nesarkvechnep

Is this your first SwiftUI app? The table and the sidebar have weird padding and as someone primarily focused on front-end in the past, it makes me uncomfortable. The sidebar can be a NavigationStack, currently it doesn't look like it.

mickelsen

Not mine, just sharing what I found! Otherwise I'd have used "Show HN".

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nkmnz

[flagged]

mayoff

This is a copy of an infamous comment about the then-new Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

whalesalad

Thanks -- was about to say... FTP? SVN? What year is it?!

neepi

Well that's pretty funny, but is it really?

Most people within my circles don't use cloud storage any more, me included. This is a combination of being cheapskates, being fucked over on billing issues with no support (Microsoft), getting their account hacked (Google), actual tangible data loss (iCloud) or having genuine privacy concerns (all of them).

We all have USB sticks. Some of us use rsync :)

aegypti

Over the holidays I used an admittedly large USB stick to transfer photos from my aunt’s 2011 netbook onto my MacBook signed into her iCloud Photos because she doesn’t own a computer, and both her and my 13yo cousin asked if it was a vape.

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