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Comment by teknopaul | Hacker News Reader

If ever there was a tool that didnt need a gui its rsync. Idea is to keep two folder structures in sync. Exactly the sort of thing you want to script, or trigger when one side changes, or cron.

I've use rsync all my computing life but i've rarely wanted to have to manually push a button to make it work.

A good cli interface is clearly the correct interface to rsync.

Embeding rsync in an app that does something else makes sense, eg edit locally auto push changes, but embeding rsync in an app that does nothing but rsync without any automation or integration options makes no sense to me.

You have to learn a new interface that you cant automate. Its dead end interface. The whole point of cli interfaces is that they are infinitly hackable and pluggable.

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I think the foundation of this comment is incorrect. This helps you build up the rsync command and test it. It gives you the rsync command that it runs. You're supposed to take the command it generates and use another tool to automate it. You're not supposed to automate the interface. It fulfills the conditions you expect of it.

And personally, I loath constructing rsync commands. Every 2 months I have to parse that 2300 line rsync man page. And every 2 months google sees another search query "rsync GUI" Because I am sick of building these things.

And if the tool has an option to say "yes, that's what I needed, now make me a crontab entry!" then I'd say it could be very useful.

As the parent mentioned I script rsync once I know what I need. But like you said I do it so infrequently I usually have to man rsync to find the right cl to add to my script.

I appreciate this comment, because at first I didn't understand why I would ever use this program, and now I want to use it. Rereading 'man rsync' for the 10th time is really is annoying.

But it just will never be worth a 200mb download. Gosh. It's like bloat on a whole 'nother level.

Interestingly, the useful parts (for you, and likely lots of others) are those that would be readily adapted to a regular web app/site.

"If ever there was a tool that didnt need a gui its rsync. Idea is to keep two folder structures in sync"

rsync is a tool to copy data - it can keep two folder structures in sync but that is not its sole purpose.

Unison https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ is a tool to keep two folder structures in sync - that is its main goal but it can have other uses.

Unison happens to have a WIMP style GUI.

rsync could have a WIMP GUI and a console one. One does not preclude the other. I think you are right that embedding rsync in a more narrowly focused app might be the best option but it is not the only way.

> Unison https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ is a tool to keep two folder structures in sync - that is its main goal but it can have other uses.

And though I tend to be a GUI hater, Unison is one tool where I find the GUI much more useful than the command line alone. The game is to iteratively come up with a set of rules which Unison will use to into effect on your dataset. The GUI quickly show you the effect of your current rules, and lets you propose the next iteration etc.

Very few people "know" rsync's interface. Any time I want to do anything more than -avz, I have to look it up. A well-made GUI would mean that instead of looking up "what option or combination of options does this?", you could just find the label that says "does this".

Of course, this GUI seems to only have the few most common options (i.e. the ones people are likely to remember), which indeed makes it pretty useless.

Making a GUI around a CLI is like translating a russian, experimental,supposedly untranslatable novel. Sure, it's hard, but there's still people out there wanting to read the book and who could enjoy the result, no matter how imperfect.

One of the main audiences for this GUI are people who maybe only ever use the CLI once a month/quarter and can’t even remember how to edit mid-line in the terminal. For them this GUI is a great idea.

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