[clug] SparkleShare vs. Dropbox

[Jamie Carl]

On 15/04/13 09:32, Bob Edwards wrote:
> I have been using SparkleShare recently (http://sparkleshare.org), which
> is a "Dropbox replacement" built on all the goodness of git and ssh etc.
> (and you can easily run your own server, so complete control over your
> files etc. - also runs on Macs, 'doze and Linux - but not Android, yet).
>
> Anyway, being built on top of git, SparkleShare ends up using up to
> twice the disk space on each client as compared to just the files it
> is managing.
>
> Eg. I have about 1.5GB of PDFs in a shared "folder" on my client and
> git adds another 1.4GB for its compressed, cryptographically hashed
> "repository" of those files. On the server, it only stores the 1.4GB
> of git stuff, but on each other client that is syncing with my share,
> there is the same git "overhead".
>
> Anyway, I was wondering what disk space overheads Dropbox imposes. As
> I don't use Dropbox, I was wondering if someone on the list who does
> could let me know what extra disk space it might be using.
>

It's minimal. 

As you are aware, sparkleshare it's just a fancy sync client that sits
on top of Git.  So it maintains a local git repository and hence the
extra storage requirements. 
If you really want to see it shine, delete all your files and you'll
find that it will STILL take up 1.4GB. ;)  The good thing is you can
throw normal Git commands at it from the command line and roll back to
any revision.  Such is the nature of Git file versioning.

As for dropbox, it only stores the files and then a 'database' of the
current state of your files so it doesn't really take up much more
space.  Maybe a few MB depending on the number of files you are syncing.

On a side note, there IS an Android client for Sparkleshare but I don't
think it works anymore.  It requires some extra server-side software in
order to function and I think that software is broken.  At least, I was
never able to get it to work.

Jamie