There comes a time in any geek’s life when he (usually it’s a he) wants to say, “make these two folders the same.” Of course it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not terribly complex.
Not until you look at the software available for the task these days, anyway, and this isn’t just a Mac thing. Oh, there are utilities out there, all right, but they all have two things in common: they do too much and they cost too much. I didn’t want to pay thirty dollars, not when I could spend two days of my life instead. That’s what my life is worth, these days.
So, over the last couple of days I made a folder merge utility. It came out pretty nice. I thought I’d put it up at the Hut as freeware, sort of a promotional thing.
But…
It deletes files. Of course it does; when you synchronize folders and files don’t match something’s going to get deleted. It’s in the nature of the program to delete files. (The fancier programs allow you to reconcile the differences between files. That’s why they cost money.)
But…
Someone’s going to delete the wrong files. With this sort of software that’s a dead certainty. I show in living color when a newer file will be replaced by an older one, but in this day and age is that enough? The software itself is pretty solid now. It does exactly what it says it does. I don’t think that’s enough.
How about you make the “folder merge” utility available for free on the Hut, and then you charge for the companion “undo folder merge” utility?
Bob, you’re not in marketing, are you?
That’s genius!
I’m remembering “Pirates” as I begin my venture into MacLand, especially video editing!
Copy the contents of both folders to a ‘backup’ folder. Do the merge. Let the user manually delete the backup folder. For experts, bury an option in the Preferences to automatically move the ‘backup’ folder to the trash.
That’s a good suggestion, as long as the folders being merged aren’t too big. I’ll poke around with that.
I only wish that I, too, could remember “Pirates”.