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Resulting in lintian complain: I: vdirsyncer: spelling-error-in-manpage usr/share/man/man1/vdirsyncer.1.gz errorneous erroneous
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==========================
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When do I need Vdirsyncer?
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==========================
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Why not Dropbox + todo.txt?
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---------------------------
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Projects like `todo.txt <http://todotxt.com/>`_ criticize the complexity of
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modern productivity apps, and that rightfully. So they set out to create a new,
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super-simple, human-readable format, such that vim suffices for viewing the raw
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data. However, when they're faced with the question how to synchronize that
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data across multiple devices, they seemed to have reached the dead end with
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their novel idea: "Let's just use Dropbox".
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What does file sync software do if both files have changed since the last sync?
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The answer is to ignore the question, just sync as often as possible, and hope
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for the best. Because if it comes to a sync conflict, most sync services are
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not daring to merge files, and create two copies on each computer instead.
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Merging the two task lists is left to the user.
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A better idea would've been to use ``git`` to synchronize the ``todo.txt``
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file, which is at least able to resolve some basic conflicts.
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Why not file sync (Dropbox, git, ...) + vdir?
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---------------------------------------------
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Since :doc:`vdirs <vdir>` are just a bunch of files, it is obvious to try *file
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synchronization* for synchronizing your data between multiple computers, such
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as:
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* `Syncthing <https://syncthing.net/>`_
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* `Dropbox <https://dropbox.com/>`_ or one of the gajillion services like it
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* `unison <https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>`_
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* Just ``git`` with a ``sshd``.
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The disadvantages of those solutions largely depend on the exact file sync
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program chosen:
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* Like with ``todo.txt``, Dropbox and friends are obviously agnostic/unaware of
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the files' contents. If a file has changed on both sides, Dropbox just copies
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both versions to both sides.
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This is a good idea if the user is directly interfacing with the file system
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and is able to resolve conflicts themselves. Here it might lead to
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erroneous behavior with e.g. ``khal``, since there are now two events with
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the same UID.
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This point doesn't apply to git: It has very good merging capabilities,
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better than what vdirsyncer currently has.
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* Such a setup doesn't work at all with smartphones. Vdirsyncer, on the other
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hand, synchronizes with CardDAV/CalDAV servers, which can be accessed with
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e.g. DAVDroid_ or the apps by dmfs_.
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.. _DAVDroid: http://davdroid.bitfire.at/
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.. _dmfs: https://dmfs.org/
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