Before this change, bisync intentionally ignored Google Docs (albeit in a
buggy way that caused problems during --resync.) After this change, Google Docs
(including Google Sheets, Slides, etc.) are now supported in bisync, subject to
the same options, defaults, and limitations as in `rclone sync`. When bisyncing
drive with non-drive backends, the drive -> non-drive direction is controlled
by `--drive-export-formats` (default `"docx,xlsx,pptx,svg"`) and the non-drive
-> drive direction is controlled by `--drive-import-formats` (default none.)
For example, with the default export/import formats, a Google Sheet on the
drive side will be synced to an `.xlsx` file on the non-drive side. In the
reverse direction, `.xlsx` files with filenames that match an existing Google
Sheet will be synced to that Google Sheet, while `.xlsx` files that do NOT
match an existing Google Sheet will be copied to drive as normal `.xlsx` files
(without conversion to Sheets, although the Google Drive web browser UI may
still give you the option to open it as one.)
If `--drive-import-formats` is set (it's not, by default), then all of the
specified formats will be converted to Google Docs, if there is no existing
Google Doc with a matching name. Caution: such conversion can be quite lossy,
and in most cases it's probably not what you want!
To bisync Google Docs as URL shortcut links (in a manner similar to "Drive for
Desktop"), use: `--drive-export-formats url` (or alternatives.)
Note that these link files cannot be edited on the non-drive side -- you will
get errors if you try to sync an edited link file back to drive. They CAN be
deleted (it will result in deleting the corresponding Google Doc.) If you
create a `.url` file on the non-drive side that does not match an existing
Google Doc, bisyncing it will just result in copying the literal `.url` file
over to drive (no Google Doc will be created.) So, as a general rule of thumb,
think of them as read-only placeholders on the non-drive side, and make all
your changes on the drive side.
Likewise, even with other export-formats, it is best to only move/rename Google
Docs on the drive side. This is because otherwise, bisync will interpret this
as a file deleted and another created, and accordingly, it will delete the
Google Doc and create a new file at the new path. (Whether or not that new file
is a Google Doc depends on `--drive-import-formats`.)
Lastly, take note that all Google Docs on the drive side have a size of `-1`
and no checksum. Therefore, they cannot be reliably synced with the
`--checksum` or `--size-only` flags. (To be exact: they will still get
created/deleted, and bisync's delta engine will notice changes and queue them
for syncing, but the underlying sync function will consider them identical and
skip them.) To work around this, use the default (modtime and size) instead of
`--checksum` or `--size-only`.
To ignore Google Docs entirely, use `--drive-skip-gdocs`.
Nearly all of the Google Docs logic is outsourced to the Drive backend, so
future changes should also be supported by bisync.
Refactored the case / unicode normalization logic to be much more efficient,
and fix the last outstanding issue from #7270. Before this change, we were
doing lots of for loops and re-normalizing strings we had already normalized
earlier. Now, we leave the normalizing entirely to March and avoid
re-transforming later, which seems to make a large difference in terms of
performance.
Before this change, --resync was handled in three steps, and needed to do a lot
of unnecessary work to implement its own --ignore-existing logic, which also
caused problems with unicode normalization, in addition to being pretty slow.
After this change, it is refactored to produce the same result much more
efficiently, by reducing the three steps to two and letting ci.IgnoreExisting
do the work instead of reinventing the wheel.
The behavior and sync order remain unchanged for now -- just faster (but see
the ongoing lively discussions about potential future changes in #5681!)
Before this change, Bisync sometimes normalized NFD to NFC and sometimes
did not, causing errors in some scenarios (particularly for users of macOS).
It was similarly inconsistent in its handling of case-insensitivity.
There were three main places where Bisync should have normalized, but didn't:
1. When building the list of files that need to be transferred during --resync
2. When building the list of deltas during a non-resync
3. When comparing Path1 to Path2 during --check-sync
After this change, 1 and 3 are resolved, and bisync supports
--no-unicode-normalization and --ignore-case-sync in the same way as sync.
2 will be addressed in a future update.
Before this change, bisync needed to build a full listing for Path1, then a
full listing for Path2, then compare them -- and each of those tasks needed to
finish before the next one could start. In addition to being slow and
inefficient, it also caused real problems if a file changed between the time
bisync checked it on Path1 and the time it checked the corresponding file on
Path2.
This change solves these problems by listing both paths concurrently, using
the same March infrastructure that check and sync use to traverse two
directories in lock-step, optimized by Go's robust concurrency support.
Listings should now be much faster, and any given path is now checked
nearly-instantaneously on both sides, minimizing room for error.
Further discussion:
https://forum.rclone.org/t/bisync-bugs-and-feature-requests/37636#:~:text=4.%20Listings%20should%20alternate%20between%20paths%20to%20minimize%20errors