News
This is the news archive of the Syncany website.
13 Jun 2016: The core team of Syncany is on hiatus for an indefinite amount of time. Feel free to do with the code what the license allows and encourages, but please don't expect any maintenance. The team thanks everyone who has contributed to Syncany in one way or another. We might pick up development again, or we might not. Feel free to contact us via e-mail or IRC.
20 Jun 2015: We had a couple of releases since December. In version v0.4.1-alpha & v0.4.2-alpha we added a new 'Preferences' dialog to add/remote plugin and a copy-link feature in the GUI. With version v0.4.3-alpha, we released our first Mac OSX version, added a history browser to the GUI and made plugins updatable. For version v0.4.4-alpha, we rewrote the Syncany API on the website, added 3rd party plugins and update checks for the application and plugins. In version v0.4.5-alpha, we added automatic OAuth token handling, added optional transfer manager features, added a default .syignore file, and much more.
In all releases, we also fixes countless bugs! Check out the releases page for more details.
28 Dec 2014: We've reached another milestone. The Syncany core feels more stable by the minute. We released v0.2.0-alpha, v0.3.0-alpha, v0.4.0-alpha, with v0.4.0-alpha being the best release we have ever had. The GUI (tray icon and 'New folder' wizard) works quite well. You can see it in action on our YouTube channel. Screenshots are to come on this site. We also made a couple of new plugins for Flickr (encode data in images, video here), Dropbox, OpenStack Swift and RAID0. Beta is just around the corner!
20 Oct 2014: In releases v0.1.6-alpha, v0.1.7-alpha, v0.1.8-alpha, v0.1.9-alpha, v0.1.10-alpha, v0.1.11-alpha and v0.1.12-alpha, we have added a Samba plugin, a working REST/WS-based daemon, a first version of the GUI (cross-platform demo on YouTube), and written an awesome user guide. We've also created an APT archive for Debian/Ubuntu users, and made a Windows installer includes the GUI plugin. And of course, we've fixed countless bugs, slowly approaching stability. Unfortunately, we're still not there yet -- we still have some nasty bugs ...
25 Jun 2014: Here are some updates: stability, an already implemented basic daemon, a preview of the REST/WebSocket-API-enabled daemon and a web interface. This is from an e-mail to the mailing list:
Hello everyone, long time no see! Before I go on my 3-week vacation, I wanted to let you all know about the state of the project. Since it's been a while, there are some updates.
1. Stability: Number one goal is still stability and we have done quite a bit of work to get there. We've made uploads/downloads a little more fault tolerant (connection retries, especially important with "wobbly" connections) and fixed a lot of integrity issues on the database layer. Once in a while there are some issues with the "cleanup" (throwing away too much metadata and such), but it's getting better.
2. Basic daemon: In 0.1.4ff we have added a user daemon that can handle many Syncany folders and run in the background. It can be started with
syd startand is available in the default installation. Configuration via ~/.config/syncany/daemon.xml.
3. Daemon with WebSocket and REST API: In the feature/daemon branch, we started developing an extended daemon with a WebSocket and REST API that can be used by user frontends to retrieve the status of the application or asynchronously receive events. Via HTTP/REST, it can also deliver any file in any version (e.g. "get file 123 in version 2"). Currently implemented requests: "get file tree at specific date", "run CLI command", "get database versions", "get file", "get file history", "list watched folders", "restore file".
4. Web interface plugins: By default, the daemon only offers the REST and WebSocket API, but no web interface. However, web interfaces can be plugged in using the plugin API. we started implementing a JavaScript-based web interface in the "simpleweb" plugin. A first demo can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NPVffywZVs -- this demo is a bit older; as of today you can browse the tree at different times and restore now works. Also, you can click on files to view them in different versions.
That's the status as of today. We would love some help with the web interface stuff (as it's something that can be worked on individually) or all the other things. Also: If you look closely on GitHub, the "we" is currently just an "I", so please consider helping out if you like what we're doing.
Well then, I'm off to Canada-eh!
12 Jun 2014: As promised, we released bi-weekly: The releases v0.1.3-alpha, v0.1.4-alpha and v0.1.5-alpha bring a nice daemon implementation (run in background), more security for the SFTP plugin (host checking) and the WebDAV plugin (HTTPS), and a whole lot of bugfixes -- really a lot! Also, we started working on a proof-of-concept web interface (YouTube preview).
27 Apr 2014: We decided to release bi-weekly and make development a little bit more agile. So here's the new version: Syncany v0.1.2-alpha brings lots of bug fixes, behind-the-firewall support through proxy, and most importantly very dynamic storage plugin installation/removal. Supported plugins in this release are: FTP, SFTP (no host checking), WebDAV (HTTP only), Amazon S3. Also check out the install instructions.
14 Apr 2014: Mathieu Velten is talking about Syncany at EclipseCon in France. The title of the talk is Syncany, a secure open-source file sync tool: concepts, architecture and work in progress . If you're interested, go spread the word about the talk to get it selected. Retweet it or share a post on Google+! And of course, if you live nearby, you are very welcome to drop by.
30 Mar 2014: We finally released a first alpha version of Syncany! Checkout the releases page on GitHub to download it, and the install instructions for more details.
28 Oct 2013: I uploaded a couple of small screencasts on YouTube demonstrating the current code base, for those of you who don't like to read: (a) developer demo, FTP plugin, with detailed explanations, (b) 2-minute conflict handling demo, local plugin, and (c) Amazon S3 demo
19 Oct 2013: Believe it or not, we are stiiilll working on Syncany. We recently moved to Github for the main development. If you're interested, I wrote a detailed blog post about where we are and where we're going.
7 Mar 2013: We're still hanging in there. Even though the direction is now a different one. We're first trying to integrate Syncany with SparkleShare as a backend. Check out a detailed status in my recent mailing list post.
10 Apr 2012: After many people have asked: No, the project is not dead. However, my full-time job does not leave me much time for the project. At the moment, we're stripping down the code base to a minimium and are writing tests for the components. We're also reviewing much of the code -- and have to change a lot on core parts of it (sync algorithm, in-memory database, update files). We have reduced the code base from > 20.000 LOC to 8.000 LOC, introduced Ivy as build tool, changed the update-file semantics to make indefinite runtime of the application possible, daemonized the core, stripped out the GUI, stripped out the profiling capability, Singleton-ized everything, changed the config-mechanisms, incorporated some of the chunking mechanisms of my Master's thesis, etc.
The reason why we cannot share the progress in a public repository is that the project is now partly being developed by students, and is part of their grade. So we cannot share every step of the way. But I understand that we should at least publish something. I'll meet again with the students soon and we'll discuss finally publishing some code...
20 Nov 2011: Development update: we decided to reduce complexity in the current code base to make a stable Syncany core. As a first step in that direction, we will remove a couple of things for the first release: (1) the graphical user interface (command line daemon for now), (2) multi root folder functionality (only one folder for now), (3) remove JPA (speed optimization). Target date for this is end of January 2012.
11 Oct 2011: I started working, so my spare time is very limited right now. Luckily I found a way to keep the project going: five Uni Mannheim post-grad students will make a stable version of Syncany as part of their curriculum. The students' task is to stabilize the current code base and refactor necessary parts to create a fully working version of Syncany. Time horizon for the project is one year, but I expect a working version in a few months. I will of course still be hugely involved in everything!
18 Jul 2011: About a month ago I announced a preview release for end of July. It now looks like we won't be able to make this release in time. Maybe August/September is more realistic. Stay tuned!
3 Jun 2011: We're making good progress: the team is growing, the Windows version almost on the same level as the Linux version, and many people offered to translate Syncany in their language. We now have an IRC channel #syncany on Freenode for as well as a Wiki page to gather important information for developers. Thanks for everyone's support!
27 May 2011: I created a Syncany developer team and a developer mailing list on Launchpad. Please sign up if you'd like to help out or are interested in details. I'll post some specifications there soon.
25 May 2011: I was interviewed on the Ubuntu UK Podcast on Tuesday about Syncany. And Andrew from Web Upd8 wrote a very nice blog post about the software. I also created a Twitter account. Follow @syncany to stay up-to-date.
23 May 2011: First code is available on Launchpad. Detailed instructions on how to build and install can be found in the DEVELOPMENT file. Please be aware that this is a veeerrry early version. It's unstable and slow!
27 Apr 2011: Launched the website and the Launchpad project. I will publish the first working code and a demo video in a couple of weeks.