I’ve been wanting to dip my toes into the open source world for a long time. I certainly have used open source projects for a long time. I was an active supporter of NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org port for Mac, helping to write documentation, and answering support questions. It was fun.

This time I am the one writing the code. This is my first project, but from the looks of my hard drive this won’t be my last.

Introducing sync.applescript

Makes it sound like something spectacular, no? This one is for you Mac users who want to have files backed up / synced onto a thumb drive. It is designed to be run from the destination location and sync files found elsewhere.

So, for example, I keep a copy on a thumb drive. I plug in the drive, run the application and it updates folders on the drive to match the folders on my computer—updating the changed files and deleting the deleted files.

It is a one-way sync, updating directory with any changes in directory, filling a backup role, rather than a true sync.

It uses AppleScript to run a command line utility call rsync to do so.

I’ve set it up on GitHub for anyone who wants it.

https://github.com/jakeosx/sync-applescript

How Do I use that?

Go to the GitHub page, download the AppleScript file, put it in the directory you want your files to be copied to (so I put mine on the thumb drive). Read the README. It has all the answers you want!

Basically, you add in the path to the folders you want to copy, and tell it if your drive is FAT32/exFAT or no.

Seriously, I spent a lot of time on that README, and it should have all the answers!

It is also released under the GPL3, so feel free to copy, use, pass it around, modify as you wish as per that license!

WARNING

NEVER TEST SHIT YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET ON LIVE DATA! Try this out with a copied folder to make sure you get it. It isn’t set up to delete anything on the origin folder, but will on your synced folder. Play with a few files and see how it works before you set it up for real.

BACK UP YOUR SHIT. ALL OF IT. And yes, that is the intent of this program, but still.