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Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

support.google.com

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Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#31

Post by sangeeth96 »

kevincox wrote: post #29
sangeeth96 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this hard-linking only possible when performing an action via the web/app interfaces? Because the wording makes it extremely confusing. Even I thought this was going to affect copies of the same file in multiple places. I don't notice any points in their support doc which tells me otherwise.

I'm not sure how the sync worked. But for your use case I suspect you won't have this problem. I'm 99% sure that this is talking about "hard links" not "files with the same contents".

Thanks for clarifying and I do think your explanation(s) make sense. Kinda wish it was explicitly stated in the support docs as well.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#32

Post by zmj »

snewman wrote: post #3

I worked on the original (long since superseded) implementation of the metadata store for Google Drive, i.e. the system which was responsible for tracking file / folder relationships. The requirement to allow an item to appear in multiple locations was a huge complication, in part because of the way it interacted with permissions being inherited from a folder to the items in that folder. I imagine this change may be…

I worked on another sync client's representation of filesystem structure, and came to the same conclusion. Hard links enable some cool behavior, but in retrospect added more complexity than anyone expected. Migrating to shortcuts / soft links seems very reasonable - I wish I had started there.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#33

Post by kevincox »

sangeeth96 wrote: post #31
kevincox wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the sync worked. But for your use case I suspect you won't have this problem. I'm 99% sure that this is talking about "hard links" not "files with the same contents".

Thanks for clarifying and I do think your explanation(s) make sense. Kinda wish it was explicitly stated in the support docs as well.

I definitely see where your confusion is coming from even if I didn't think of that use case initially. It would definitely be a good idea for them to explicitly call out the difference.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#34

Post by johndfsgdgdfg »

londons_explore wrote: post #7

This whole article sounds like "we're remaking the backend, and no longer support the same file being in multiple locations, so we're just going to break any users using that feature."

No post body was provided.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#35

Post by sowbug »

kevincox wrote: post #20
sowbug wrote: post #17

If someone has a Drive desktop client installed, has two source-code directories with some identical files in them, and modifies one of the identical files in just one of the directories, I can imagine they'd be very surprised when the other copy in the untouched directory also changes. I'm on Linux where there's no official Drive client, so this won't happen to me. (I use Syncthing instead.)

What you are describing sounds like two distinct files with the same content. The change only affects the same file that has been "hard linked" into two separate folders. Copies of files are unaffected.

I see. I think your "hard linked" term is the difference between the "Add shortcut to Drive" and "Make a copy" options when right-clicking a file in the web UI. If this announcement affects only files created with "Add shortcut to Drive," and uploaded files that happen to have the same content as another file aren't automatically turned into shortcuts, then I'm less alarmed by the change.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#36

Post by rurp »

I couldn't figure this out from reading the article but perhaps someone here knows. Say I want to create a new edited version of a document without changing the original, so I first duplicate that doc and then edit the new copy of it. Does this new Drive behavior mean that the original document I copied from will be changed as well?

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#37

Post by sanderjd »

nitinagg wrote: post #19

So dropbox always deduped data at it’s backend without any such user facing change. How is this better than that?

This is unrelated to that. It isn't about de-duping data, it's about symbolic links ("shortcuts") vs. hard links ("multi-parenting"). You can still make copies of files as usual, and the content can be de-duped (or not) transparently to users.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#38

Post by kevincox »

sowbug wrote: post #35
kevincox wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing sounds like two distinct files with the same content. The change only affects the same file that has been "hard linked" into two separate folders. Copies of files are unaffected.

I see. I think your "hard linked" term is the difference between the "Add shortcut to Drive" and "Make a copy" options when right-clicking a file in the web UI. If this announcement affects only files created with "Add shortcut to Drive," and uploaded files that happen to have the same content as another file aren't automatically turned into shortcuts, then I'm less alarmed by the change.

Note that "Add shortcut to Drive" is the new behaviour and new action. It was called something different before. Maybe "Add to folder" or something like that. I believe it was always distinct from the "copy" feature.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#39

Post by sanderjd »

rurp wrote: post #36

I couldn't figure this out from reading the article but perhaps someone here knows. Say I want to create a new edited version of a document without changing the original, so I first duplicate that doc and then edit the new copy of it. Does this new Drive behavior mean that the original document I copied from will be changed as well?

No, you just need to make a copy of the file, not a shortcut to it.

Re: Google Drive: Shortcuts replacing files and folders stored in multiple locations

#40

Post by lupire »

layer8 wrote: post #15
snewman wrote: post #3

I worked on the original (long since superseded) implementation of the metadata store for Google Drive, i.e. the system which was responsible for tracking file / folder relationships. The requirement to allow an item to appear in multiple locations was a huge complication, in part because of the way it interacted with permissions being inherited from a folder to the items in that folder. I imagine this change may be…

So is this basically a switch from hardlinks to softlinks?

Yes.
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