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Do you have separate tasks for each app export folder (one for Loop Habits, another for Notally)? If so, you can improve your backup strategy by wrapping them inside another folder and having a single copy task for only this outer, let's say, Additionally, you could create a file delete rule with SDMaid to empty all these inner folders after the backup with one tap, just to make it easier to delete old exported files. I can also recommend SMBSync2, which is also a great tool, and you could use it to further automate the way you sort the files with specific rules. Some apps export their app data to the Downloads folder by default, and with this app you could set some tasks to move them to desired folders inside the |
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Thanks for the reply, appreciate it! I figured it out myself as well at some point after writing that, and—after moving a few things around—started to just sync the parent folder. Having a separate task for each app made sense when I was using FolderSync with root privileges and I would directly sync the app data folder of each app to the cloud. Now that I've decided to go rootless, my whole approach had to change and one sync task per app is not necessary anymore. Took me a while to realize that 😅 I'll have to check SMBSync2 out, sounds like a useful app. I'm using Tasker myself, and have already used it to automate the kind of things you describe, like renaming backup files and removing old backups. |
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The issue with triggers not running in parallel should be fixed with 2.5.3. I have reworked the entire Task-handling.
See #256
Quite a bit of the app is indeed a hot mess. There is a lot of legacy code, which is in dire need of cleanup, but i get to that problem later.
Yes, this is expected. Not great, but expected. The issue is that rclone itself only has the remote name as an identifier, and this app does not create a link between a remote name and an internal identifier. This leads to this behaviour. Though, once changed, it should change everywhere. If you find places where it doesn't, can you create an issue ticket for that?
See #257
Yep, this is how the app is build. A lot of the internal stuff assumes "LOCAL" and "REMOTE", and it is hard to change AND migrate that.
This is a totally great idea. I would love to do it. Why i wont, i will explain below.
Some of the stuff is already in the works, especially the "chained" tasks. #183
I have rewritten the damned notifications like 3 times, and everytime stuff like this crops up. I have not found a good way to manage this, but i think the current implementation is the best one. Which is not great.
I promised that i would talk about stuff later in this post, and just like Season 5 of the so named Series, you just have to wait a bit longer.
Like, now. Wait, you didn't ask that question? Who is doing this summary? First: Thank you for your notes. It is always good to get such "generalized" feedback instead of specific bug reports, it shows how this app is actually used and experienced by users. There are two problems this app currently has:
Most of the code that make this app work is leftover from the previous maintainers. They did a lot of good work, but i can totally see why they stopped maintaining it. This code is usually getting in the way of changing stuff, because either it doesn't support it architecturally, or because making those changes requires so many followup changes, that even small stuff takes a lot of time. As an example: The new update introduced update-checks. Implementing that took roughly 6-8 hours, but implementing the settings screen for that required me to spend double that to rewrite the settings altogether. Technically, that was not required, but it would have become unmaintainable at some point. All of this boils down to my second point: I simply don't have the spare time to fix all of this. At least not in the short to medium term. It might even be more easy to start a full rewrite, but that would take even longer and it would certainly mean a downgrade in terms of feature-availability. As you stated yourself: Other projects attract a lot of developers, but that hasn't been the case for this one. (There are quite a few contributions in different ways, and i am grateful for every bit, but it is not on an ongoing, reliable way) So yes, you are right. It is in part due to "lack" of interest of more "permanent" developers to help out, that limits this progress. This is why i cant do all the nice-to-haves like sorting, or other basics. I would love to actually make changes to the core of this app, but at the moment i lack the time, motivation, and 'plan', to tackle the core of this app. It's not great to be in this position, but i don't see any other way to handle this project at this time. Thank you again for taking the time to write such an evaluation! |
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Hey, sorry for the late reply. My ADHD brain only lets me focus on one topic for a limited amount of time before my interests suddenly move elsewhere 😅 Plus I settled on S3Drive, which solves my use-case bug free, which also contributed to me moving on. Still I think Round Sync looks more elegant, and the
I tested it and it still didn't work, sorry. It only ran two or three of the scheduled tasks I think. I hear you on the legacy code, that must be frustrating to work around all the time. And explains what I already felt, that behind the screens the code isn't really solid. Anyway, whatever you do in the future, thanks for working on Round Sync up 'til now! 🫡 |
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Hey, I just wanted to share my experience with Round Sync so far. I found it about 2 weeks ago when looking for a way to encrypt my data before storing it in the cloud (a.k.a. somebody else's computer), and I've been really excited about this and rclone existing. Super cool what you can do with it, and super easy as well!
So yeah, good first impression. It's quite easy to set up, clean interface, options are overall well explained. Didn't experience any friction there. However, soon, lots of bugs and missing features started surfacing.
Scheduling
Triggers don't actually run at their scheduled time, one reason seems to be that the current stable version doesn't handle multiple triggers firing at the same time well (#137). Another reason I experienced, I apparently needed to restart the app after importing a config file, or the triggers in the new configuration would not fire.
Naming & referencing remotes
I created a remote with the same name as an existing remote and it just overwrote the existing one without warning. Just gone, like that, no way to undo. I renamed that new remote to see if the old one would resurface (it didn't), then when I was done playing around restored my backup, but the remote that had been overwritten and I had now restored, now had the name of the new renamed remote.
And when renaming a remote, in my Tasks and Triggers it would still be referred to by its initial name. And also when you edit it. So it seems to me like instead of using a UUID internally, it's using the initial name as the hard reference, and the renaming of a remote only affects some screens and not others.
Some changes only take effect after you restart the app, like the aforementioned imported triggers, or when you rename a remote and the old name still shows up in the drawer if you have it pinned there until you restart it. And in the application (icon) shortcuts, you can't even get it to change to the new name, and now you also cannot disable it anymore. Toggling the checkmark next to the new name doesn't have any effect.
Remotes, application shortcuts & the drawer
Regarding those application shortcuts, I couldn't turn Internal shared storage off, it would always come back on. During this renaming business though, I've somehow managed to turn it off and now I cannot turn it on anymore; just like earlier the setting doesn't stick. I've also had the Internal shared storage, that's there by default after you intialize the app, reappear in the drawer after previously unpinning it from the drawer. I've had it reappear after hiding it. It just seems to be a bit of a hot mess.
Applying the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle
After deciding on a different name for my local parent backup folder I realized I'd be better of not specifying the full path in every Task, but instead have either a variable I could reference, like %BACKUP/Loop Habits/, %BACKUP/Notally/ etc. or—since this doesn't seem possible—have a remote which has the parent backup folder as its root. This way I only have to point that remote to a different folder when I decide to change its name or move it somewhere else on my internal storage, and luckily exactly this can be achieved with the Alias remote. However, it turned out an Alias to a local path is still seen as "remote" and you cannot synchronize from it to a remote remote. Major bummer, it seemed such an obvious use.
Sorting
Then, a much more basic and expected feature would be sorting. Can't change the sort order of screens. The Remotes screen seems to be ordered alphabetically (with the ability to pin selected remotes to the top), Tasks and Triggers are listed in the order you set them up in. One user mentioned wanting to group by remote, I myself want to sort things alphabetically (#238).
Lastly the Logs screen, which is listed newest entry first and no way to change that. But the strangest thing: there is no way to clear the logs! Well, there is a way: exporting your config, resetting the application by clearing it's storage, importing your config and redoing all the app's settings to your liking.
Workarounds
So I keep inventing these workarounds to make the app behave a little better. Like scheduling each Trigger one minute after the previous one, so that in the end all my daily Triggers are executed within 15 minutes. Or writing a script that changes the JSON in an exported config file, so that when you reimport it Tasks and Triggers are sorted alphabetically.
There's no way to run all tasks now, also a bit of an expected basic feature (and I haven't found a workaround yet; I can probably do it with AutoInput). O, I almost forgot, I tried to workaround it by firing a list of intents from Tasker, but the Intents feature, which is advertised on the main GitHub page, is not even working (#216) 😭
Report notifications
There's the confusing behavior of the report notificiation, that also includes Tasks which were included in a recently dismissed report notification. So you have dismissed all Round Sync notifications, run one task, and the notification says e.g. ‘3 tasks ran succesfully’. Or when it says ‘There was nothing to do. Also deleted 3 files.’ I mean, there was either nothing to do or you deleted 3 files. This confused the hell out of me at first, but I think I later realised this is caused by what I just described, the ‘deleted 3 files’ was already included in a previous report but shows up again because it's still recent.
Or maybe that was not it, I'm not sure right now. Just goes to show that the report notification is really confusing at times. It would also say 11 tasks had run when I only have 10 tasks, and then the reason for that was either it included something from a previous report or it sees deleting files as a separate Task, even though the deleting as well as the uploading of some files was the result of running the same task.
Stranger things
What else? O right, the application will return to the Remotes screen in certain situations, like when you rotate your phone or when you toggle your device's dark mode. Meanwhile the drawer will still indicate the screen you were using and didn't intend to leave.
Operating Round Sync in landscape mode had all kinds of problems when I tried it. It hung or sprung back to the Remotes screen for no reason. Didn't go well.
When first playing around with Round Sync I remember making a remote of type Local and then a Crypt remote that pointed there, since the crypt functionality was basically the reason for trying this app. And I don't exactly remember what happened. Either the Local or Crypt disappeared or whenever I tried to store a file in the crypt things crashed. I don't remember exactly, but it didn't work at all, but I thought ‘maybe it does work when using it with my actual cloud storage’ and luckily it did.
Closing words
So I think Round Sync is a pretty cool product, very useful and it's really better having it in its current form than not having it at all. However, my expectations, after reading it's the continuation of another app that's the continuation of another app, and it having a version number of 2.2.3, were a bit higher. With so many bugs and missing features, it feels more like a very early beta version of a new product to me than the .2.3 update of the second major release of the second continuation of an app.
That said, I still think it's a really cool product and I wanted to give some honest feedback in the hopes it helps make Round Sync better. I'd also definitely be willing to pay for a product like this, and I totally understand that if it's developed as a hobby project by one person it may not get very far very soon. I have found a similar app that is also early stages, but is closed source and they have a revenue model. They have an iOS app as well, which is great as I have both Android and iOS, so I'll be checking them out next and putting my money where my mouth is if it's good.
I guess it's also a matter of attracting developer interest, isn't it? Some projects like NewPipe, ReVanced and Organic Maps seem to do very well, either because they have very passionate founders and/or they have investments or grants that allow them to work on it a lot, or there are just a lot of developers interested in advancing the project. I hope to one day learn Android development so that I can also contribute to open source there, but there are things beyond my control that interfere with this for now.
Keep up the good work!
p.s. I tested Round Sync 2.2.3-terrapin on a Google Pixel 4a running LineageOS 20 (Android 13)
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