Ellen Sync

Ellen Sync, or lns is a command line tool to manage symlinks for syncing files across computers. The files will live in one place, like Google Drive, Dropbox or a normal git repository but can be symlinked to anywhere on your computers.

WARNING: Ellen Sync is still in early development. There is already a growing collection of integration tests. But to be safe, make sure you have periodic backups of your files.

Setup

First make sure you have node.js, then open a terminal and run the following to install lns.

npm install -g lns

At this point you need to configure the lns store, i.e. where lns will store the actual files for syncing.

lns init

You can specify any folder as the store. It's up to you to backup or synchronize that folder any way you wish. The wizard will suggest local Google Drive or Dropbox folders. Git repositories, file-system mounts and rsynced folders will work just as well.

Mapping files

After configurin lns, you can map files to the store from anywhere.

lns map somefile.json somefolder

The files are moved to the store and replaced by a symlink. The mapping will be saved in the store so other computers can set up the same symlink.

Updating symlinks

After you have mapped files or folders on one machine, you can easily set up corresponding symlinks on another computer. Assuming you have configured lns on a new computer and synced the store over, just run:

lns update

This will create symlinks for any path in the store which has at least a parent folder on the local machine.

You can see an overview of all mappings with lns ls. This also indicates if mappings are symlinked locally or not.

Dealing with conflicts

There may be conflicts between local files and the store when you run lns map or lns update. Both of those commands take a --ours and --theirs to use either the local or the store version of conflicting files.

Additionally you can run lns diff <path> to compare local files with the store.

Unmapping files

You can remove a mapping with unmap. This will remove the symlinks and restore normal files and folders.

lns unmap somefile.json somefolder

It will also update metadata in the store so other computers are unmapped when they lns update. The actual files are still in the store, so symlinks on other computers don't break before they update.