| |
Unison 2.9.70 Download 
Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. (It also works on OSX to some extent, but it does not yet deal with 'resource forks' correctly; more information on OSX usage can be found on the unison-users mailing list archives.) It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.
Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, etc.), distributed filesystems (Coda, etc.), uni-directional mirroring utilities (rsync, etc.), and other synchronizers (Intellisync, Reconcile, etc). However, there are several points where it differs:
-
Unison runs on both Windows (95, 98, NT, and 2k) and Unix (Solaris,
Linux, etc.) systems. Moreover, Unison works across
platforms, allowing you to synchronize a Windows laptop with a
Unix server, for example.
- Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program:
there is no need to hack (or own!) the kernel, or to have
superuser privileges on either host.
- Unlike simple mirroring or backup utilities, Unison can deal
with updates to both replicas of a distributed directory structure.
Updates that do not conflict are propagated automatically.
Conflicting updates are detected and displayed.
- Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the
internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or
tunneling over an rsh or an encrypted ssh connection.
It is careful with network bandwidth, and runs well over slow links
such as PPP connections. Transfers of small updates to large files are
optimized using a compression protocol similar to rsync.
- Unison has a clear and precise specification.
- Unison is resilient to failure. It is careful to leave the
replicas and its own private structures in a sensible state at all
times, even in case of abnormal termination or communication
failures.
- Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU
Public License.
|
|