Genuine question, why do people here use Dropbox or box when Google drive is far superior?
What's so superior about Google Drive?
I've used both and it feels like Dropbox is more polished and user friendly in every way...
Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
61–70 of 143 posts
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#62The most requested feature, to allow a file or folder to be ignored by Dropbox sync without using selective sync is finally in beta. The community requested a .dropboxignore file but they chose another solution which I’m sure is reasonable for making the feature more user friendly to non-devs. This will be immensely helpful for node_modules or build target directories.
Now they just need the also much-requested inverse feature, a reliable way to sync files outside of the Dropbox root folder. Useful for app specific config files that often don’t let you choose where to store them. Using symlinks on Mac sort of works but it’s kind of fragile and it’s a pain to remember to set up on a new machine, and on windows there’s no workaround at all.
It’s kind of crazy that there are still these low hanging fruit advanced syncing use cases, that would help keep Dropbox’s position as a leader in this crowded space, and they are a multi billion dollar company, but they drag their feet on it for so long. I know they want to keep cranking out mediocre me-too productivity tools that nobody is asking for in case they get lucky and one catches on, but they should really be able to do this too.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#63Will an ignored file be ignored for all devices or just my device? That is, what if I have a file/directory in my dropbox on one device and then another device "ignores" it? would it be ignored everywhere or just in my device? Either way seems like a recipe for a lot of problems. No wonder it took so long to get to it (and it's still in Beta).
Paragraph #2 answers your question:
> Once ignored, the file or folder remains where it is in your Dropbox folder and is synced to your computer’s hard drive, but it’s deleted from the Dropbox server and your other devices, can’t be accessed on dropbox.com, and won’t sync to your Dropbox account.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#64Genuine question, why do people here use Dropbox or box when Google drive is far superior?
Out of Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive. Google Drive is by far the worst and most unreliable one.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#65The dropbox cli already lets you ignore folders. I've have had the following script for many years to ignore node_modules:
exclude_folders=$(find . -type d -name "node_modules" | grep -v "node_modules/")
echo "Excluding $exclude_folders"
dropbox exclude add $exclude_folders
dropbox exclude list
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#66Genuine question, why do people here use Dropbox or box when Google drive is far superior?
Because, to this day, Dropbox is the only cloud storage service that is capable of syncing only the part of a file that was modified. If you have ISOs, zips etc, GDrive will re-upload the entire file while Dropbox will only upload the changed parts.
This alone is why I keep using Dropbox.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#67I worked on a sync product that had this feature "forever." The problem with the "ignore" feature is that it creates corner cases in almost every use case we add. A huge amount of engineering resources goes into this feature, even though its only used by a minority of users.
A big problem comes with un-ignoring a file / folder, specifically if someone else has gone and added the same file / folder on another computer or in the web. The only way to make that use case work smoothly is to basically read minds, because there's no way to know which version of the file / folder is the right one.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#68The dropbox cli already lets you ignore folders. I've have had the following script for many years to ignore node_modules: exclude_folders=$(find . -type d -name "node_modules" | grep -v "node_modules/") echo "Excluding $exclude_folders" dropbox exclude add $exclude_folders dropbox exclude list The feature I want is pattern-based ignore in a .dropboxignore file.
This is also true of the GUI. It's called Selective Sync
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#69The most requested feature, to allow a file or folder to be ignored by Dropbox sync without using selective sync is finally in beta. The community requested a .dropboxignore file but they chose another solution which I’m sure is reasonable for making the feature more user friendly to non-devs. This will be immensely helpful for node_modules or build target directories.
> This will be immensely helpful for node_modules or build target directories. Why would anyone put a node project in Dropbox to begin with?
After an office break in and having my laptop stolen my company gave me dropbox to back up my home folder.
Dropbox actually managed to completely hose every single node_modules folder by the end of the week. It got confused somehow then ended up just splitting all the files up with dates on them as if there was a conflict across hundreds of files.
Stopped using it after that.
Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta
#70The dropbox cli already lets you ignore folders. I've have had the following script for many years to ignore node_modules: exclude_folders=$(find . -type d -name "node_modules" | grep -v "node_modules/") echo "Excluding $exclude_folders" dropbox exclude add $exclude_folders dropbox exclude list The feature I want is pattern-based ignore in a .dropboxignore file.
This is also true of the GUI. It's called Selective Sync
I’m finding it hard to understand how this new feature differs from Selective Sync.
Is there something this lets one do that couldn’t be done before? Or is it just adding convenience?