[softwarelist] Re: SyncDiscs again

In message <4e8e203c04chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chris Johnson <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes 
multitasking is this. However, if a file is modified *after* the
snapshot
I believe SyncDiscs works its way through files, copying as it goes. No snapshot in other words. There is a worry about having enough memory to hold a snapshot. 


It would be useful to include checking for open files, which
currently seems to stop SyncDiscs in its tracks. There are still a
number of apps that keep files open all the time for various reasons.
Yes. However this illustrates a point about SyncDiscs it does not copy every single file, if it sees an extra folder, it issues a copy command for the entire folder without bothering to go through the contents. 


Does SyncDiscs 'simply' issue a stream of *copy, *wipe, etc commands
once it has sorted out the time stamps of existing files,
non-existent files etc?
It issues *copy for copying and moving, but it use the FS Control SWI for wiping things.
If you (or someone else) wants to take over SyncDiscs and improve it, then we can come to an arrangement on the source code. Or you can have just the source code for the synchronisation part. Or I'd be happy to go over to using *wipe so that the whole thing can be easily used as a tool.
Or you could have the source for SyncDiscs alone and chop out all the wimp code, turning it into a command line tool, which could be used from other programs.
The thing about source code is that SyncDiscs uses my own RISC OS library so anyone working on it has to come to terms with that (self documenting code and obscure logic - e.g. flex_alloc() returns an os_error *).
It seems like all you have to do is issue commands to Filer Action if you want multitasking, however I wonder why I didn't do that... it would for example be better to wait for one copy operation to terminate before starting the next. I wonder if you'd end up just coding your own multitasking copy.
It's one of those things, working out how to synchronise files is not very complicated, multitasking copying is not that complex, etc. etc. it all adds up. 



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David Pilling
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