short.tex (1776B)
1 Unison is a file-synchronization tool for POSIX-compliant systems 2 (e.g. BSDs, GNU/Linux, macOS) and Windows. It allows 3 two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on 4 different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified 5 separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in 6 each replica to the other. 7 8 Features: 9 \begin{itemize} 10 \item Unison works {\em across} platforms, allowing you to synchronize a 11 Windows laptop with a Unix server, for example. 12 \item Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program: 13 there is no need to modify the kernel or to have 14 superuser privileges on either host. 15 \item Unlike simple mirroring or backup utilities, Unison can deal 16 with updates to both replicas of a distributed directory structure. 17 Updates that do not conflict can be propagated automatically. 18 Conflicting updates are detected and displayed. 19 \item Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the 20 internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or 21 tunneling over an encrypted {\tt ssh} connection. 22 It is careful with network bandwidth, and runs well over slow links. 23 Transfers of small updates to large files are 24 optimized using a compression protocol similar to rsync. 25 \item Unison has a clear and precise specification\iffull, described 26 below. \else. \fi 27 \item Unison is resilient to failure. It is careful to leave the 28 replicas and its own private structures in a sensible state at all 29 times, even in case of abnormal termination or communication 30 failures. 31 % \item Unison is easy to install. Just one executable file (for each 32 % host architecture) is all you need. 33 \item Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU 34 Public License. 35 \end{itemize}