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Symlink changes - Mac OS sync desktop to Dropbox broken
I have tons of working files on my Mac desktop which I need to access on iOS and this worked well with symlink between desktop and dropbox folder. With the recent change where symlinks don't sync fol...
I think that just about all of the functionality that was lost when Dropbox dropped support for symlinks is still available (at least in MacOS), so long as care is taken in where files are actually stored and how the symlinks are created. You can have directories (actually symbolic links) that act like ~/src and ~/bin, but are synced across machines by Dropbox, if you are careful about where the files are actually stored and how the symbolic links are created.
For obvious reasons, Dropbox does not support soft (symbolic) links from inside of Dropbox to elsewhere on the system. This makes sense. Dropbox only syncs files that reside within its own directory structure. Having Dropbox sync files referred to by things like ~/Dropbox/mydir --> ~/mydir is a recipe for disaster. But things like ~/mydir --> ~/Dropbox/mydir make perfect sense.
The problem is that some of the obvious ways of creating those links do not work. For example, these fail:
% cd /Users/me/Dropbox
% ln -s myfile ~/myfile
% ln -s mydir ~/mydir
The results (~/myfile and ~/mydir) look like perfectly good soft links. But if you try to open ~/myfile or cd into ~/mydir, they fail.
Similarly this fails:
% cd /Users/me/Dropbox
% ln -s myfile myfile2
% mv myfile2 ~
% ln -s mydir mydir2
% mv mydir2 ~
In short, if your current working directory is inside of Dropbox, your soft links are hosed if moved outside Dropbox. The same is true of aliases created by Finder inside of Dropbox.
This, however, does work:
% cd /Users/me
% ln -s Dropbox/myfile .
% ln -s Dropbox/mydir .
The softlinks ~/myfile and ~/mydir can now be followed, both in a shell and by apps like Finder.
So, you can have directories (folders) and files that effectively appear in random places in the file heirarchy that are synced by Dropbox.
Maybe everybody else already knew this. But I didn't, nor did the support person I talked to at Dropbox. I hope it's helpful.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHello jeff1054.
Thanks for posting about symlinks and how they can work in your user case.
I merged your topic to this one to keep things neat.
I'd be happy to see you help around like you did today. Your feedback and solutions are always welcome.
Thanks for joining our Community! :grin:
cp -rp $1 ~/Dropbox ; rm -r $1 ; ln -s ~/Dropbox/$1 $1
Then on other machines: ln -s ~/Dropbox/$1 $1
And you have come pretty close to recreating the functionality of iCloud Drive. Or at least putting an existing directory tree onto a pretty nice network file system that is accessible when the network is down. ;-)
Cheers!
