Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#101

Post by 7777fps » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

michaelmior wrote: post #77

jrockway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is poor tooling that contaminates your working directory. If you look at something like Bazel, all the build artifacts end up in ~/.cache (or similar). Thus there are no artifacts to gitignore. OCI container builds ("docker images") are done by simply adding artifacts controlled by a build rule into the image (rather than starting a vm/container, copying a working directory into the container…

Personally I prefer that build artifacts end up somewhere under my current working directory. That means if I want to clear everything out related to a project, it's easy to do so without interfering with anything else.

Yes, as frustrating as it is to need on occassion to rm -rf /node_modules and start again to fix things, at least that's an option.

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#102

Post by golergka » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

kbumsik wrote: post #17

golergka wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will be immensely helpful for node_modules or build target directories. Why would anyone put a node project in Dropbox to begin with?

I put everything in Dropbox including all of my projects. In my experience it works pretty well even if node_modules can't be ignored now. Putting every projects in Dropbox with .git is the most awesome feature of Dropbox. With Dropbox's History and Time Machine feature, you will be almost never able to delete/overwrite your work permanently, even by intention.

Why not just use github, gitlab or other VCS? Personally, I enjoy using Dropbox for music projects (which VCS are not well suited for), but for code...

(I apologize if I sound as if I'm telling you what you should be doing; I am really just trying to understand the motivation behind such a decision - but I fully understand that even if something seems bizzare to me, it's just my personal humble uninformed opinion).

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#103

Post by mah_man » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #100

Are these settings persisted on their server? Does Dropbox know to not sync those files on a new computer, or do you have to set those settings everywhere? If not, if this works like Selective Sync (which is a local setting), then you can end up accidentally syncing those files from new computers. And is thus not equivalent with a .gitignore. Also does it support glob patterns? Why couldn't they do a .gitignore that…

On a side note, you really are true to your name!

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#104

Post by iudqnolq » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

jedieaston wrote: post #54

positr0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, Dropbox as your VCS and database! https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eaphr8/a_dropbox_...

That story makes me want to become a goat farmer every time I read it, but, Dropbox must have intended that usage if they had a publicly available API, right?

According to TFA in parent Dropbox happily had them on a custom plan, charging them more and more as their data grew.

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#105

Post by CodeWriter23 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #97

Fantastic!!! Will definitely go back to Dropbox when this feature is available. Recently I switched to OneDrive, also no ignore that I can find, but I'm only making extra copies of stuff in there that I want backed up to the cloud.

Did OneDrive finally lift the 20,000 hard limit on the total number of files?

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#106

Post by tmpz22 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

7777fps wrote: post #101

michaelmior wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I prefer that build artifacts end up somewhere under my current working directory. That means if I want to clear everything out related to a project, it's easy to do so without interfering with anything else.

Yes, as frustrating as it is to need on occassion to rm -rf /node_modules and start again to fix things, at least that's an option.

Don't forget the git rm -r --cached ./node_modules!

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#107

Post by nicky0 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

treebornfrog wrote: post #25

Genuine question, why do people here use Dropbox or box when Google drive is far superior?

In what ways is Google Drive superior would you say?

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#108

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

yunruse wrote: post #75

gwbas1c wrote: post #67

I 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…

Sync conflicts are never fun, but from personal experience programs that attempt to auto-resolve them aren’t exactly letting the user in on what’s going on. The best way to make that work in that case would be to explicitly inform the user when unignoring of the conflict and ask which to keep (showing metadata etc). A quick “retain other version” would help if the user was unsure.

All I can say is: That's easier said than done. Dropbox's implementation has no UI, building such a wizard is probably much more complicated than they anticipated!

I've always advocated for wizards like that, but everyone gets enamored with building the next shiny feature.

Some days I wonder if I should just quit and make an open source sync product... And if I'd actually make a living doing it!

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#109

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #56

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine a world where a arbitrary directory is filled with gitignore, dropboxignore, googledriveignore, backblazeignore, s3ignore, rsynciginore, dotignore, ipfsignore . . . Goddamn, stop the world I want to get off

I think the problem here is poor tooling that contaminates your working directory. If you look at something like Bazel, all the build artifacts end up in ~/.cache (or similar). Thus there are no artifacts to gitignore. OCI container builds ("docker images") are done by simply adding artifacts controlled by a build rule into the image (rather than starting a vm/container, copying a working directory into the container…

> If you look at something like Bazel, all the build artifacts end up in ~/.cache (or similar).

That is a terrible design, as it makes parallel builds error prone.

Re: Dropbox ignore file or folder in beta

#110

Post by wtmt » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

While the instructions go to a level of detail with the assumption that the person typing these commands may not be familiar with them, I don’t get why there are no instructions on this page to revert ignoring a file or folder so that it starts syncing to Dropbox again.