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History: Why Syncthing

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What was Syncthing picked over the many alternatives?

Context

Please see: Files vs web pages. In the context of WikiSuite, we already have two other software components that manage files

  1. ClearOS Flexshare, which provides a standard file server, with three interfaces: 1- Web (HTTP/HTTPS) 2- FTP (FTP/FTPS) 3- File Shares (Samba)
    • However it has the weaknesses of standard files and folders: no meta data, file needs to be in only one folder, or it's duplicated, hard to segment permissions, etc.
  2. Tiki File Galleries, which provide virtual folders and sub-folders which are web accessible. This abstraction layer permits multiple features: archives (previous versions of a file can still be accessed), check-in / check-out / lock, etc. and it leverages Tiki's multitude of built-in features: search (including file content), share secret link to file via email, permissions, etc. It's even possible to use as a field type in Tiki Trackers, a powerful and flexible database, form and report creator.
    • However, it has the weakness that the only reliable interface is the web interface
      • Which forces to download files, edit them locally, and re-upload. WebDAV support is meant to solve this, but it's not been the most reliable. The main Free / Libre / Open Source library in PHP is
      • It is not suitable when you have a set of files generated by an external system or that need to maintain internal links. Please see enhancement being planned: https://dev.tiki.org/File-Gallery-direct-file-mapping-mode


By using each tool when it's appropriate, we have a good solution for most use cases. However, file sync was missing. A extensive analysis of all available Free / Libre / Open Source software was conducted. And Syncthing was deemed the best to complete the feature set.

Beyond satisfying the usual component criteria, Syncthing's P2P design is awesome.

  • P2P by default, so same software on all nodes. Central server is just a convention.
    • This is much less work that having different code bases to manage
    • It is designed from the ground up to sync any number of nodes. So a node can get data updates from any other node.
  • Syncthing is written in Go, which has fantastic performance (which is important when you have a lot of files)
  • Default interface is a Bootstrap admin panel, and clients can make alternate interfaces such as Syncthing-GTK for better integration with operating system.
  • https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/blob/master/GOALS.md

Why not ownCloud / Nextcloud

Why not Seafile

  • Seafile is an interesting project but
    • The server and clients are different code bases, which is bigger long term workload.
    • Can't do P2P sync. Everything needs to go via central server.

Why not Pydio

  • Pydio is an interesting project but
    • The server and clients are different code bases, which is bigger long term workload.
    • Can't do P2P sync. Everything needs to go via central server.

Why not SparkleShare

  • SparkleShare is an interesting project but
    • It's based on Git whereas Syncthing uses the Block Exchange Protocol which is more suited for this use case
    • Can't do P2P sync. Everything needs to go via central server.

Why not LinShare

  • LinShare is an interesting project but it is for file sharing and not file sync. File sharing is covered by Tiki file galleries

See also

History

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Information Version
Marc Laporte 57
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Marc Laporte We'll remove the dependency on ClearOS. Tiki and Syncthing will interoperate directly (one day!) 56
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Marc Laporte 55
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Marc Laporte https://doc.tiki.org/WebDAV has been revamped for Tiki20! 54
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Marc Laporte Removing part about WebDAV for Syncthing since they use another protocol for Sync: https://github.com/nextcloud/client/blob/master/doc/dev/sync-algorithm.md Thank you Benoit 36
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