Short:    Synchronise two folders automagically!
Author:   Chris S Handley (cshandley@iee.org)
Uploader: Chris S Handley (cshandley@iee.org)
Version:  v1.02
Type:     util/dir

The purpose of FolderSync is to allow one set of files to be shared by two
separate people (computers), and occasionally update BOTH people's set of files
with the changes that the other has done.


Neither person has priority, because FolderSync just 'mirrors' what one person
has done on to the other's files, as if both were working on just a single set
of files.

It does NOT run in the background, but is run by the user when needed.
Synchronisation is done at the level of whole files, rather than somehow
updating a part of a file (as might happen with Address Book sync s/w).  It can
sync between an Amiga disk & a FAT (Windows) disk quite happily.


I wrote FolderSync to allow me to carry 10,000 of my Amiga's files (500Mb)
around with me on my Psion 7 (a 'minature laptop'), without having to worry
about remembering what changes I had done on either my Psion or my Amiga, and
without having to synchronise every time I switched between Amiga or Psion.

It can also be made to backup the changes in one folder to another, which I use
to keep an up-to-date backup of my Workench partition (in case I do something
silly, like formatting it).


Having spent so much effort making FolderSync very fast & reliable, I though I
ought to make it publically available :-)

I am not aware of any other program that does anything vagely similar, and if
there is, then I doubt it is written so well!  I am quite proud of how well it
works, given the apparent lack of support by filing systems.

Note that it is a CLI (Shell) program, and should probably only be used by an
'expert' (someone with some experience of the technical side of computers -
which probably covers a lot of the surviving Amiga users!).

NOTICE:  You must follow the upgrade procedure if you have used a previous
version for synchronisation.


History
+++++++
v1.02 (11.04.2002)
- First Aminet release.
- Minor tweak to the error handling system.
- Forgot verbose report of dir creation.
- Removed theoretical problem of possible hidden mirror duplicate filename when
reducing a filename length.
- Added reporting creation of dir that already exists but was hidden.
- Added version (detection) to lastsync file.
- Corrected FolderSync's executable version year date!
- Added tweaking of name case, attributes & comments.
- Added automatic detection of filesystem support for comments & protection
bits, thus all protection bits are now supported.

v1.01 (19.03.2002)
- Minor corrections to the documentation.
- Removed minor bug where copied FAT95's timestamp file comment.
- Removed a bug which potentially could trash memory (but didn't seem to).
- Replaced slow AmigaE memory & E-string functions with my own super fast ones,
resulting in a speed up of about 70 times!

v1.00 (19.02.2002)
- First release.

v0.00 (02.11.2001)
- I first started seriously looking at programming it.
