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Dropbox is not a tool for developers

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Re: Dropbox is not a tool for developers

#3
I never thought that put symbolic links on dropbox was good idea...

But I see where it might come from.

When my startup started, my associate nagged me to death to me put my files on Google Drive, like the artist already did.

I ended doing it, just to show him that it would not end well...

In fact, the result was worse than expected, Mac OS X store folder icons inside the folder, the SDK I was using use ALL files in a folder to build a application (does not matter what those files do), the end result was the Google Drive created icons getting shipped with the apps, that just flat out crashed the testing devices... It took 1 week to figure out why all the crashing, and also to make Google Drive not conflict with some other stuff, hardlinking was required, and took more 3 days to undo the hardlinks.

Thus, lesson: DON'T, JUST DON'T.

But sometimes a person might nag you to do it, then by all means do it, it will fall on their head and they will learn (of course, if it is a intelligent person, if you have a dumb boss, then I fell sorry for you).

Re: Dropbox is not a tool for developers

#5
I'm not sure what the problem with Dropbox is. Almost anything I'm working on is inside my Dropbox directory. Yes, every time I save or generate some files they're uploaded to Dropbox, but if you turn off notifications[0] the only potential problem is bandwidth. And let's face it, most small projects aren't exactly going to hog GBs of bandwidth very easily.

For me, Dropbox is a simple way to automatically backup the stuff I'm working on, and I don't have to think twice about it.

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/help/34/en

Re: Dropbox is not a tool for developers

#6
A timely post. Dropbox loves to delete things, especially if you mess with 'selective sync'. For example, it deleted the git repository of my project a few weeks in. It deleted all of the files I had symlinked to in a subdirectory of my project. I was able to recover these files, but Dropbox is damn scary, since I don't know that actual circumstances in which these deletions occur. I suspect it has something to do with symlinks and selective sync, but I'm not entirely sure.

One thing that I might try is to have a very "Dropbox aware" process whereby you intentionally create empty delicate structures and then exclude them from sync. For example, do a `mkdir .git` before `git init`, exclude .git from DB, then do a quick `rmdir .git; git init` and pray to the God of data integrity. But I don't know if that will work.

Re: Dropbox is not a tool for developers

#9
post #6

A timely post. Dropbox loves to delete things, especially if you mess with 'selective sync'. For example, it deleted the git repository of my project a few weeks in. It deleted all of the files I had symlinked to in a subdirectory of my project. I was able to recover these files, but Dropbox is damn scary , since I don't know that actual circumstances in which these deletions occur. I suspect it has something to do w…

Remember remember remember: Dropbox isn't a backup service! Make sure you keep proper backups for your important data.
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