Yes, I use Unison regularly to synchronize files on my home and office computers.
I had been using rsync for this purpose, but I found it had two serious drawbacks: 1) If I wasn't very careful I'd constantly end up resurrecting deleted files. Basically, rsync is great if you start with system A and system B in the same state, then make changes on system B and want to propagate them to A. However, if you make changes to both A and B and then want to synchronize them it's not so simple. For example, if I delete a file on computer A, and then go to computer B, make some changes to files, and try to synchronize them, I'd do it by using rsync to send any new or newly modified files from A to and B and do the same from B to A. That will move all my modifications (assuming I haven't modified the same files on each side), but it will also result in copying the file I deleted on A back from B to A, because it appears to be a new file. 2) I was always a bit nervous about accidentally overwriting something important. Unison on the other hand keeps track of the changes so that it recognizes files as having been deleted and propagates those deletions to the other machine. It has an interface (text or GUI) for reviewing all the changes and making choices about them before performing the synchronization, and you can even have it store backup copies of files that are modified during synchronization just in case you mess something up and want to revert it. For for example, I have it keep a copy of the previous version of a file modified by synchronization for one week. So, for me, it's really been great. Shawn Wells wrote: > Been some talk of rsync lately. Has anyone played with Unison? > > http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison > > Great replacement for rsync because it will go both ways. >
