How to? Automatically continuously monitor and sync folders?

[jadpager]

Is there a way to run Beyond Compare from startup and for it to automatically continuously monitor and sync folders? maybe it would need an interval of say 5 minutes.

Thanks in advance

[Aaron]

Hello,

We do not currently automatically sync, but you could write a BCScript that performs a sync, and then use the Windows Task Scheduler to run the script every few minutes. You would want to time how long a script roughly takes so you are not running duplicate scans.

Script examples can be found in the Help file of BC3 under the Using Beyond Compare section -> Automating with Script.
Reference is found in the Help file under Scripting Reference.

I would strongly recommend using BC3 interactively first, to get a preview of how syncing works before committing a sync. ***Script and sync actions are not undo-able, so you will want to test with backed up or test data initially while you learn how to use the software.***

Let us know if you have any questions.

[meunierc]

Aaron,

I too would be interested in such a feature native in Beyond Compare. Running BC3 synchronously with Task Scheduler would cause real problems whenever we encounter an atypical case (ex. just added 30GB of data to my disk). Maybe the only viable way to start it would be in an enless loop in a BAT file:

:restart
bcompare @mybackup.bc3
sleep 300
goto restart

Current offerings for folder synchronization (Microsoft SyncToy, I'm looking at you) seem to take exponential time to run, thus are quite useless in a real-life setting. I think BC is "just this close" to be the perfect replacement.

Cheers,
Christian

[rfindley]

2nd this

I definitely second this feature request. I've been using a similar feature in WinSCP for years, but WinSCP only works for syncing to an FTP or SCP site, not folder-to-folder on a local machine. It makes coding to a remote build-server _much_ easier.

But for my current needs, I have a virtual machine that shares a drive-mapped Windows share. It would be great to be able to auto-sync my host to the VM via the shared folder. As you say, BC3 is "this close". In fact, I originally assumed the "Auto-Sync" button that sometimes appears in BC3 did exactly that, but it doesn't. Still haven't figured out what that button does, and can't find it in the help. Maybe if compare takes a long time, clicking the AutoSync will automatically perform the sync after the compare is done.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the suggestion and additional use case notes.

For reference, we do also have a KB article to help setup script for an automated sync, available here:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo...zz=kb_schedule

[mconta]

Dear Aaron and Scooter Sw.,
I'm using BC since 2004 and it's really sad to see that a must feature like "auto sync" is not yet implemented.
This thread started on 2010..... 4 years passed with NO implementation on what customer are asking to Scooter Sw. company.
As a developer I understand that all the logic to implement auto sync had been already developed, you have the compare feature, you have the SYNC NOW button.
Just add a checkbox that executes a refresh & sync every X seconds.
Sorry if my tone may seem a little rude, but as a developer I don't understand your company decisions.
A lot of customers are requesting this feature since 2008 (http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ight=auto+sync) and you continue to respond with the same answer :"use this beautiful script".
Don't you understand that this missing feature may upset customers?

Best regards,
Matteo Conta
Sw Developer.

[Chris]

Matteo,

Thank you for the feedback.

We're a small company with numerous customers submitting many feature requests. While we would like to implement all of the features our customers suggest, we don't have the resources to implement every feature suggested. We do keep track of how often features are requested and use that to help prioritize feature requests.

Beyond Compare is focused on interactive comparison, merging, and syncing. Although we do support automated operation through scripting, given limited developer resources we focus the majority of our development resources on interactive use.

[mconta]

Dear Chris,

thank you for your answer, I understand that a small company needs to prioritize customers request, I also come from a small company and I live this problem every day.
But I think that the development effort for this feature is really low: using manual actions everybody can compare and synchronize two folders every N seconds. I'm asking to add a timer in order to automatize this interaction.

Are you sure that this feature is not important? As developers we sometimes use beyond compare to keep in sync a local folder and an external test folder. This is a really common situation, always when you need to add little adjustment to the final product.

I hope you are going to find some space for this feature in the future.

[Ken S]

I have Beyond Compare version 3.0 and I use it both ways, through the user-interface and scripting.

If I want to semi-automate some task I use the scripting method and it works really well.

But if you want to fully automate something windows has a Task Scheduler. A person can write a script and then set up the Task Scheduler to run that script at a certain time, or when Windows starts, or at Log In. But since a script is not an executable file you would have to run a batch file that runs the script. Something like this in the batch file.

"C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 3\BCOMPARE.EXE" @"C:\Beyond Compare 3\Scripts\autoback.txt"

But you can probably even run it directly by putting the above line right in the "Run" box of the Task Scheduler, I tested Windows Notepad that way: C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE c:\text.txt

I set it up to automatically run Notepad every minute and load the text file "text.txt," it works.



Ken

[Tecktron]

I'm a BC4 user on Ubuntu and I would like to add a +1 for a checkbox that will do an auto-sync.

This way I don't have to switch windows and click a button and wait for the sync to finish to go back to what I'm doing when working in that manner. However, I don't always want to have this on, so having the checkbox would be a really quick and nice feature to implement.

Logic like this:

On sync {
if (checkbox is checked) {
run update function
} else {
// do as normal
enable button
// (button on click function runs same update function
}

Thanks for your consideration!