Re: Feature request: confirm data loss when renaming folder with ignored files

On 2023-07-12 05:59, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Why are you declining to sync something that is important, while wanting
> to sync the containing directory?  I really am curious, because I find
> that people are wanting to use ignore all the time, in ways that don't
> make sense to me.

There is a lot of room between "important enough to sync" and "just 
delete it randomly[1]"

I think it's going to be common to keep configuration files 
synchronized, but not current-state, caches, and machine-specific data, 
and after shuffling stuff around on one computer I don't necessarily 
want to lose the local state elsewhere.

Browser partially downloaded .part files are another example, you don't 
want to try synchronizing them at all, but nor do I want them deleted if 
I delete all empty subdirectories from another machine.

I synchronize Thunderbird's configuration, but not the ImapMail or 
indexes as that gets rebuilt on the fly. I don't really rename profiles 
that often so I'm not likely to actually lose data here, but it takes 
about an hour to rebuilt my ImapMail and related indexes from scratch.

[1] I know it isn't random, but in practice, it bites when you aren't 
expecting it even if you fully understand the behaviour.

> One approach might be to make removing a directory fail if it is
> non-empty (with the files that are supposed to be recreated moved
> first).  This will turn your data loss scenario into an annoyance for
> many, but that seems reasonable.  It is reasonably likely that it is a
> small change, basically rmdir instead of rm -rf, or just declining to
> enumerate and clean up.  It's also reasonaly likely that it will cause a
> lot of complaints.

I think this needs to be optional to cover all use-cases. I've lost data 
to the current implementation myself. My own fault, I understood what I 
was doing when I set it up.

I'd be thrilled to have a per-profile switch, it doesn't need the 
complexity of per-path... Or at least, I already have multiple profiles 
that use the same pair of roots and do different things to different 
subsets of files for various reasons, it wouldn't be a big deal to me if 
I added one more with the sole task of deleting ignored directories 
where appropriate. I'd use this as an opt-in rather than opt-out.

I also really rely on this feature to do some cleanup of 
customer-uploaded files and the unzipped version (in subdirectories), 
but I don't synchronize the subdirectories because I can just unzip 
again if needed. But once a ticket is done, I have 30 days to delete 
everything, so it is great to just nuke a ticket's root directory and 
have the rest vanish.

Full disclosure, I don't actually use unison at work anymore, but I did 
in the past and it was perfect. I've been using it for like 15 years for 
personal and professional purposes, but $DAYJOB is complicated.

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