Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mackup: Keep your Mac application settings in sync

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–5 of 5 posts

Re: Mackup: Keep your Mac application settings in sync

#3

Post by lra »

vladstudio wrote: post #2

Question: how is it better than symlinking the entire Application Support folder into Dropbox? (I never tried it so there might be pitfalls I don't know about). Thanks.

I was doing this before, and the big caveat is that in those folders, a lot of stuff is bound to the local system, or useless on another system, when it works.

This tool solves this by being very selective on the files it syncs.

e.g. if you use a different user on 2 different macs, one of the file might reference /Users/joe/stuff while on your other mac it should be /Users/bill/stuff

For Sublime Text 2 for example, the tool make sure it sync only the config files that can be dropped on another system without requiring any in-file change.

Also it does only sync the useful config, it does not sync cache, temp files, and files specific to the install/hardware.

Re: Mackup: Keep your Mac application settings in sync

#4

Post by lra »

vladstudio wrote: post #2

Question: how is it better than symlinking the entire Application Support folder into Dropbox? (I never tried it so there might be pitfalls I don't know about). Thanks.

Also at some point you want to drop what's not in your AppSupport folder (ssh, bash, dotfiles) deal with file rights, and it becomes more complex, hence the tool.
Post reply on HN