Unison has mostly been trouble for me. I'm definitely in need of a replacement for it. Doing point to multipoint syncing, it tends to get confused and need to be manually resynchronized; and above a certain total directory byte size, which I've long since exceeded, it can't sync at all (and you have to manually break your directory into pieces and sync them separately.)
Sometimes it's not acceptable to store data on external server without root on it.
For these kind of uses Unison (mentioned in previous comments) is decent solution, but also AeroFS (aerofs.com), which works much smoother (less collision problems).
Anyway syncing data on several devices must became standard soon.
I've been using unison for exactly this for ages. I was wondering whether this will add automatic uploading on file change, but alas, all it suggest is using cron for it.
"Lsyncd watches a local directory trees event monitor interface (inotify). It aggregates and combines events for a few seconds and then spawns one (or more) process(es) to synchronize the changes. By default this is rsync. Lsyncd is thus a light-weight live mirror solution that is comparatively easy to install not requiring new filesystems or blockdevices and does not hamper local filesystem performance."
Dropbox has also clients for Android and iOS. Mobile sync would indeed be great combined with local hosting. Sparkle Share made an attempt, but it's still far behind Dropbox. This "DIY Dropbox" is not even beginning to scratch the surface of what is available in Dropbox. Perhaps an attempt to start development on a competitive DIY solution, but far from a replacement.
People are claiming in the comments that this isn't new, but this is the first such _open source_ program I've seen since Unison, which I am badly in need of a replacement for. So I for one will check it out.
I couldn't find this on their pages - does anyone know if it clones the whole repo, or just the current versions? Also, can it get rid of old versions of files to save space on the server?
Ours includes a full web front-end, versioning, 'cloud' (git) storage, and relatively easy install. Oh, unix cross-platform too (with some windows kinks being worked out).
Why not use aerofs.com? I mean thats the goal, server-less dropbox. The server is just a communication means, it does not store anything unless you ask it to.
At some point convenience trumps oss. Ask for an invite, you will get one fairly fast. Unlike dropbox it actually works when I need it (new computer) vs dropbox which coughs blood when I need it, and works fine when I don't [dropbox initial dl speed is 0.01kbps for a few hrs, aerofs caps out my bandwidth].
I'd say that this could really take off if they implemented federated storage, such that there was sync'ing across multiple storage instances (a semi-cloud, if you will). Furthermore, I see where encryption could be used to facilitate ad-hoc federation among people who might not normally trust each other, like a Tor of storage.
