Unison
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
...
What is Unison?
Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. 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, Subversion, BitKeeper, 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 and many flavors of Unix (Solaris, Linux, OS X, etc.) systems. Moreover, Unison works across platforms, allowing you to synchronize a Windows laptop with a Unix server, for example.
* 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.
* Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program: there is no need to modify the kernel or to have superuser privileges on either host.
* Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or tunneling over 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 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 has a clear and precise specification.
* Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU Public License.
Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, Subversion, BitKeeper, 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 and many flavors of Unix (Solaris, Linux, OS X, etc.) systems. Moreover, Unison works across platforms, allowing you to synchronize a Windows laptop with a Unix server, for example.
* 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.
* Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program: there is no need to modify the kernel or to have superuser privileges on either host.
* Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or tunneling over 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 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 has a clear and precise specification.
* Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU Public License.
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Categories
Backup & Sync • OS & UtilitiesLists containing Unison
Tags
- command-line-interface
- folder-sync
- file-synchronization
- database-replication
- command-line-start
Unison
Summary and Relevance
Our users have written 6 comments and reviews about Unison, and it has gotten 80 likes
- Developed by Benjamin C. Pierce
- Open Source and Free product.
- Average rating of 4.2
- 51 alternatives listed
Popular alternatives
View allUnison was added to AlternativeTo by Mutant on Jul 2, 2009 and this page was last updated Nov 18, 2020.
Recent user activities on Unison
- zittlybot added Unison as alternative(s) to Online Text Compare3 months ago
- urosgaber liked Unisonur4 months ago
No way the best for me are CopyWhiz and Gs Richcopy 360, but I will give Unison a try!
An effective tool. does what is built for. I use it since about 10 years, flawlessy, in a home environment with 3-4 devices.
Not easy to use IMHO
The GTK sdk will be needed, I used https://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/
Best synchronization software with GUI there is.
Cross-platform, highly customizable, well documented, can be made into a service with NSSM