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I have a laptop where I keep writing stuff. "Writing stuff" includes a vast, |
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mixed collection of essays, freemind mindmaps, downloaded pictures, clips, |
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some programs, and generally - a heterogenous collection of various ideas |
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that I might find "useful". I also have a computer at home, where I intend |
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to keep that stuff. |
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|
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My home computer has a more extensive collection of the heavy media such as |
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clips and pics, and as such, the folders to clips and pics are actually |
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symlinks to different partitions specialized for that media. By contrast, my |
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laptop (mobile collection) has a more updated collection of the light media |
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such as essays, mindmaps, outlines and plans and keeps the whole structure |
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under a single filesystem which is much smaller than my home collection. |
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|
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I have previously used rsync to synchronize the contents of either one, but |
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I am running under some constraints. |
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1) the soft collection (essays, mindmaps, etc) is always more updated on my |
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laptop |
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2) the pics collection sometimes is more updated on the laptop, and is |
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sometimes more updated on the desktop. |
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3) every once in a while, I refactor all or part of my collection - |
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moving/renaming files and folders around. A naive rsync will cause those |
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folders to be retransmitted, wasting a considerable amount of time / |
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bandwidth. |
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4) the heavy media are huge - on the order of 1-4 gigabytes a subfolder - |
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and cannot easily be moved around via the internet. I would ideally want |
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something that allows offline / delayed synchronization. |
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5) I don't intend to carry the entire collection on to my laptop - only the |
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bits and pieces that will fit. But I want deletions and removals from my |
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laptop to carry on to my desktop. At the same time, I don't want a |
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synchronization from my laptop to my desktop to (what a nightmare!) erase |
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the bits on my desktop that I didn't intend to carry at all. |
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|
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I was looking at various software for the job and I eventually thought of |
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settling down on a 3rd generation distributed version control system. bzr |
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and mercurial come to mind, but I'm not sure how to take any one. How would |
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I do this? |