Conflicts Behavior: Can Syncing be trusted? MAJOR issues

DEVONthink
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I guess I’m late to the party but I’ve only just tested syncing databases and how it behaves with conflicts. I set up a database sync on two devices (Mac Studio & MacBook Pro) with DropBox (latest version) and then created a new RTF I synced between them. So far so good. I then made changes to the file on both devices without DT doing a sync to simulate a conflict. After the changes, I made triggered a sync.

I have the conflicts behavior in the prefs set to “Duplicate Documents”.

I was expecting DT to notice the documents were changed on the two devices and didn’t match, keep both versions and append one of the documents with “conflict” with a data and time.

It’s not working that way at all. It only keeps one version of the updated document, discarding the changes made on the other device. It seems like it might be using the conflict behavior as “Use latest document”, even though I have “Duplicate Documents” selected on both devices. Even so, it seems random in the way it keeps one updated version over the other, sometimes it’s the most recent, sometimes not.

I repeated this issue many times, and what’s weird is that sometimes (only sometimes) it creates a copy of the document, but it’s essentially the same as the other one, thus both have discarded the changes made on one of the devices.

This is alarming. I want to be able to know I can trust the sync to preserve my work if there ever happens syncing isn’t done properly.
One of the reason I’ve chosen and trusted DT for more than a decade has been its robustness and reliability. This situation is very unsettling.

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What kind of change? Did you save the change before synchronizing?

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How did you avoid syncing to simulate the conflict?

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Thanks guys,

The changes made were new different lines of text into the original synced RTF document, such as “conflict MacBook test” and “conflict Studio test” which I then saved on both devices. Then synced.

@BLUEFROG the files were changed simultaneously on both devices and from what I can tell DT doesn’t sync and pushes the changes instantaneously. I have it on auto and it looks like it takes between 30 secondes to a couple minutes for it to “push” the sync automatically. So for my test I forced the sync manually.

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Is changing files simultaneously on two devices just an intellectual exercise, or is it actually something you require for your work?

DEVONthink is not a collaboration environment for concurrent editing. Though the server edition supports multi-user access to databases. Using sync to emulate concurrency is not a good idea. In my experience, the reliable use of sync is for the case of working on one platform, then allowing time to sync (not hours; just a while), then working on a different platform.

Expecting software to do something it’s not designed to so neither makes the software untrustworthy nor is a bold-faced-major problem.

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I think it may be syncing faster than you expect. Automatic is a flexible interval.
Try this…

  1. Get both Macs synced.
  2. Shut off your Internet on Mac B.
  3. Edit document A on Mac A.
  4. Sync Mac A manually.
  5. Edit document A on Mac B.
  6. Turn your Internet on.
  7. Sync Mac B manually.

You should now have document A and document A copy if both Macs are set to duplicate documents. I just tested this and it’s working as expected.

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Switching to Manually and disabling the option On Quit or Deactivation on both computers should be sufficient for testing.

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Also, in your testing try using different settings for “conflict” as on the Sync dialog box. What do you see with on Conflict, “Use Latest Document” vs. “Duplicate Documents”.

Keen to hear. Thanks.

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In that case it depends on the device that detects the conflict first.

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Sort of what I was thinking.

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I don’t need to work on the same documents simultaneously, it’s an exercise to see if I can trust DT syncing & conflict behavior by simulating what would happen if I worked on a document on my laptop while it has no access to the internet or if I closed the lid on the laptop before it could sync the most recent changes. And then make changes on the same document on another device (while the most recent changes might not have been updated with the work on the MacBook).

Duplicate Documents is what I was using, I didn’t test “Use Latest Document” as this wasn’t the behavior I wanted, but I can try and see.

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Yes it’s pretty much what I did in my tests and it didn’t provide the two versions of the document as expected, one of the altered version was dismissed. When you say it’s working as expected, do you mean to say it’s preserving the changes made on both devices with a duplicated version (or conflict appended to name) with both altered versions intact ?

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I can’t replicate this either (edited the same line of a markdown doc on two Macs set to manual sync.) Besides the above-mentioned possibilities I wonder if you’re just not noticing or are filtering out the second file copy. Last thing: what happens if you use another sync method, e.g. iCloud instead of Dropbox?

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