I have been playing around with iFolder for several days now and until recently it's been a frustrating experience. As I pointed out in my last post I was able to get the iFolder server up and running after a few snags and it seems to be working well...but the client has been a complete pain in the a$$.
My plan was to install the client on both my Windows box and my OS X ibook. At first it looked like it was working great. I created a folder on my windows box and put a few files in it and it synchronized with the server. Then I watched as my ibook synchronized and the folder and files were pulled down to it. GREAT! However a few more experiments fell flat. I decided to try and add some files to that folder on my ibook and see what happens. Nothing! Hmm. So I forced a manual sync operation and still nothing. I restarted the client and this time it picked up the changes and sync'd successfully but came up with a wierd status message "1 item out of sync". After that nothing would synchronize anymore. To make a long story short I tried everything I could but could not get the OS X client to consistently synchronize files. So I decided to see how well the latest development build of the iFolder client would work: 3.5. It was an even worse situation. The client would not connect to the server no matter what I did. Next I decided to give the 3.4 build a go.
Now we are talking! It seems to be working. Files are synchronizing as expected.
Here are the versions of iFolder software I am currently using:
ifolder3 server: 3.5.6112.1-1
ifolder3 client: 3.4.6112.1
Here are some of my test cases to check that iFolder is working...
Test 1
OS X: Create new iFolder and add some files
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did Windows client
Test 2:
Windows: Add some files to iFolder
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did OS X client
Test 3:
OS X: Delete some files from iFolder
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did Windows client
Test 4:
Windows: Create subfolder and add some files to it
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did OS X client
Test 5:
Windows: Move files from sub folder into parent folder and remove sub folder
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did OS X client
Test 6:
Server: Add some files through the web interface
Result: Synchronized correctly to both Windows and OS X clients
Test 7:
Windows: Edit and save file
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did OS X client
Test 8:
OS X: Edit and save file
Result: Server synchronized correctly and so did Windows client
Test 9:
OS X and Windows: Edit same file on both clients and save
Result: Detected conflicts and showed a resolution screen to pick which version to keep.
These were my simple test cases to verify that the sync clients were functioning. I'm not sure how they handle more complicated scenarios but this is the main functionality I'm looking for.
Some notes on iFolder
- Conflict resolution only detects a conflict and allows you to select which version to keep. Merging of changes, etc is completely manual and not part of iFolder currently. Not a huge deal, but it would be nice to have a merge feature or a diff feature to help you resolve the conflicts. Of course these features would only be useful for text files and not binaries.
- iFolder keeps track of history on a file (when it was created, modified, deleted) but it doesn't seem to retain versions of the files. So in other words there is no way I could rollback to a previous version of a file. This would be a feature enhancement I'd strongly suggest. You'd want to have the ability to turn versioning off/on for particular files/folders. The default would be on.
- Would be nice if we could see a changelog for each updated version they post for the ifolder client and the ifolder server.
- Give us an RSS feed for Updates and Announcements!
Overall, iFolder is looking really good. Keep up the good work iFolder team!
I'm going to try using iFolder for a few weeks with real files and see how well it works out. I'll keep you posted.