[tlug] Syncing Android Tablets

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

So after some playing around this afternoon, I've found out that the
standard Dropbox app won't do what one wants for syncing files between
your Android device and your Dropbox account.

The issue is that the only files it will actually download without you
browsing them first (and selecting them out of the browser) are ones
that are starred as favourites. You can't star a folder, either, just
an individual file. I didn't really feel up to starring all 688 books I
have in my library. :-/

There is, however, another app called Dropsync which does exactly what
one wants. If you need to sync only one folder and no files larger than
5 MB, and don't mind adverts, the free works fine. I paid ¥399 (it's on
sale right now) for the Pro version to get rid of that 5 MB limitation.
Works great, and is much, much faster and nicer than mtpfs was, even
without taking into account that I no longer need to cable up my tablet
to sync it. I've switched my phone to this as well, even though there I
could just mount the SD card as a regular drive.

One thing to note, though, is that Dropbox follows symlinks. This
affected me because I don't feel any particular need to store the git
repo for my PDF books itself in the Dropbox, just the working copy. I
tried moving the repo elsewhere and symlinking .git to it, but dropbox
dragged it all over anyway. So I removed the symlink and just use the
--git-dir option for all operations in that working copy, instead. I
suppose one day I'll update my revision control program wrappers to
automatically be able to find and link up separated repos and working
copies.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson         <cjs@example.com>         +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch