Unison

[David]

I had a little play with the latest version of Unison. After about an
hour I have yet to be able to set any form of unison in motion. I get
crashes and errors aplenty but no useful action at all. It would
probably work fine under Linux but for the average Windoze user it is
a disaster.

_Without asking_ Unison created a directory on my C: drive, despite
being run from the E: drive, and wrote its configuration files to that
directory. It asked to create a new profile, wrote a file for it, and
then ignored that newly created profile when asking for directories to
update.

Instructions for using the program are, in my opinion, very confusing
and do not address the issues involved besides being not applicable to
the version available..

The GTK 2 libraries, which are necessary for the Unison program to
run, come with an installation program which does not even add the
necessary path to the Autoexec.bat file. You have to do that yourself
but which directories in the GTK installation structure have to be on
the path is never specified.

I would suggest that this program not be recommended as a solution to
matching/updating two directories at this point in time.

 

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

I would suggest that this program not be recommended as a solution to
matching/updating two directories at this point in time.

Thanks for the heads up on this one. I was going to try it, in
addition to all the other matching/updating programs I've tried
lately, but I think I'll wait until it's a little less disorganized.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

I had a little play with the latest version of Unison. After about an
hour I have yet to be able to set any form of unison in motion. I get
crashes and errors aplenty but no useful action at all. It would
probably work fine under Linux but for the average Windoze user it is
a disaster.

Hmm, I had no problem getting it to work under Windows (but then, I am
not an _average_ windows user).

_Without asking_ Unison created a directory on my C: drive, despite
being run from the E: drive, and wrote its configuration files to that
directory. It asked to create a new profile, wrote a file for it, and
then ignored that newly created profile when asking for directories to
update.

Do you mean the ".unison" directory created in your $HOME directory?
This is standard behaviour for software on multi-user OS's, such as RSX,
VMS, AOS, UNIX, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Instructions for using the program are, in my opinion, very confusing
and do not address the issues involved besides being not applicable to
the version available..

Can't say that I referred to the docs, the command line help was
sufficient for me.

The GTK 2 libraries, which are necessary for the Unison program to
run, come with an installation program which does not even add the
necessary path to the Autoexec.bat file. You have to do that yourself
but which directories in the GTK installation structure have to be on
the path is never specified.

Again, I tend to just drop dlls in my "bin" directory, so they appear on
the path without having to muck around.

I would suggest that this program not be recommended as a solution to
matching/updating two directories at this point in time.

Then you'd be wrong! SWMBO (who is an absolute Luddite) runs it all the
time from her laptop to big machine without problem.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[David]

Hmm, I had no problem getting it to work under Windows (but then, I am
not an _average_ windows user).

I don't class myself as average either.

Do you mean the ".unison" directory created in your $HOME directory?
This is standard behaviour for software on multi-user OS's, such as RSX,
VMS, AOS, UNIX, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

This is not standard behaviour on Windoze. If it had placed the
directory in the install directory, or asked me where I wanted it I
would have no complaint.

Can't say that I referred to the docs, the command line help was
sufficient for me.

I was attempting to use the GUI version, I suppose the CL version may
be a little better behaved.

Again, I tend to just drop dlls in my "bin" directory, so they appear on
the path without having to muck around.

I tried that on the first attempt. That didn't work either.

I still do not recommend this program.

 

[Frank Bohan]

I had a little play with the latest version of Unison. After about an
hour I have yet to be able to set any form of unison in motion. I get
crashes and errors aplenty but no useful action at all. It would
probably work fine under Linux but for the average Windoze user it is
a disaster.

_Without asking_ Unison created a directory on my C: drive, despite
being run from the E: drive, and wrote its configuration files to that
directory. It asked to create a new profile, wrote a file for it, and
then ignored that newly created profile when asking for directories to
update.

Instructions for using the program are, in my opinion, very confusing
and do not address the issues involved besides being not applicable to
the version available..

The GTK 2 libraries, which are necessary for the Unison program to
run, come with an installation program which does not even add the
necessary path to the Autoexec.bat file. You have to do that yourself
but which directories in the GTK installation structure have to be on
the path is never specified.

I would suggest that this program not be recommended as a solution to
matching/updating two directories at this point in time.

Just out of curiosity, please tell us what Unison is. In the UK it's a trade
union for local government workers. On consideration perhaps I should say
employees instead of workers.

===

Frank Bohan
¶ Pangram: Puzzled women bequeath jerks very exotic gifts.

 

[David]

[...]

Just out of curiosity, please tell us what Unison is. In the UK it's a trade
union for local government workers. On consideration perhaps I should say
employees instead of workers.

A program for keeping two directories in unison, hence the name.