Can the Dropbox folder be placed in EagleFiler?

I would like to have EF tag and search my Dropbox folder along with its own records which I do not want to sync.

What will happen if I use the Dropbox app’s prefs to move the synchronized folder into EF?

I’d like to imagine that EF will index and account for what’s there and that Dropbox will continue syncing.

Has anyone tried this?

Thanks,
mrp

I did this ages ago and it works for me.

You may want to have EF ignore some of the things in your dropbox folder. I believe Michael has added internals now to ignore invisible dropbox created items.

Some applications you may use dropbox for might create folders or files which you don’t care to show up in your EF library.

There are details here on how to have EF ignore those objects during disk update scans it routinely does.

http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/manual-ah/scan-for-new-files

Thankyou so much. I shall go bravely forward and try this then.

This is fine so long as you follow the normal rules about not moving, renaming, or deleting files from outside of EagleFiler.

Proceeding as planned, the Dropbox folder was moved by its desktop app into an EagleFiler library. I quit all running applications and made sure that DropBox was checked green and inactive before running EF.
The import process began and is currently ongoing. Estimated time to complete is 4h30m for some 30,000 files.
I see that the Dropbox synced flag has gone to its blue circulating arrows state.
Is EagleFiler modifying the files as it imports them? I hope this won’t make some kind of infinite feedback loop! Is this normal?

EagleFiler does not modify the files that it imports. The blue Dropbox arrows could be due to two factors:

  1. EagleFiler assigns newly imported files the “unread” tag, and it will write this to the extended attributes (xattrs) of the file for compatibility with OpenMeta applications. So Dropbox will notice that each file has changed, but it’s only the metadata, not the file itself. It’s smart about not uploading data that hasn’t actually changed.
  2. In each folder, EagleFiler saves a backup of the metadata and the checksums (for integrity checking) of the files in that folder. This takes the form of an XML file called “EagleFiler Metadata.plist”. Dropbox will detect and upload these new files.

advice on how to remove Dropbox folder from EagleFiler
I would like to remove the Dropbox folder from EagleFiler because it hasn’t been a good solution for me. (For example, if I rename a file from within EagleFiler, the iPad app loses sync. If I rename it from the iPad, it’s EagleFiler that throws an error message. And the practical screen names for files which EagleFiler uses are not seen on the iPad which means that the actual file names become important for clarity when working on the tablet.)

Both EagleFiler and Dropbox warn about moving files from outside the application. If I follow the Dropbox instructions for moving the Dropbox folder, using their desktop application, EagleFiler will lose track of thousands of files which will need to be deleted afterwards.

What would be the best method on removing the Dropbox folder from EagleFiler?

Thanks,
Morton

I guess I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do. Do you want the files to still be in Dropbox? Are there other folders in your same EagleFiler library that you want to continue managing with EagleFiler (you just want to stop it from managing the Dropbox folder)? If that’s the case, I would tell Dropbox to move the folder. Then, in EagleFiler, drag the Dropbox folder to the trash so that it’s no longer trying to track the contents of the folder that’s no longer there.

Yes, that’s exactly it. I just want to stop EF from managing the Dropbox folder, not the other files in the library. Thanks so much for the instructions.