Not sure if I would do this. The command line mode is supposed to be run from a script so it was kept to a minimalist level. For instance, the command line execution prints the logs to stdout and doesn't honor the 'log to a file' option. It is expected that users of this feature will write scripts to redirect stdout to a log file. Similarly, it shouldn't be too difficult for the script to run another program/tool to send out the email notifications.
Ok. To be clear, I'm only requesting this because I found the scheduling feature within Acrosync too limiting and ended up executing the process from the Windows Task Scheduler instead.
Firstly, I just couldn't get the acrosync scheduling feature to work. It would never actually run on the schedule that I configured it to.
The other thing I noticed is that there's no way to tell the scheduler "Run this at 7PM daily, and if for some reason you miss the scheduled time (e.g. the PC was off), run it as soon as it is noticed (e.g. when the PC powers on at 8PM, for example). Windows Task scheduler has this feature, it's called "Run this task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed":
Additionally, there don't appear to be any settings to have Acrosync restart the task immediately if it fails. I find that when Acrosync tries to sync to my FreeNAS box, it sometimes hits a "failure to open ssh channel" error, but it works fine if i run the task again right away. To handle this, I use the Windows Task Scheduler's "If the task fails, restart every x minutes" feature here and set it to 1 minute up to 3 times:
As for the "It shouldn't be to difficult to run another program/tool"... Keep in mind I (and probably others) bought Acrosync so I don't have to install cygwin/rsync/blah/blah -- I'd prefer not to install another tool if I can avoid it, and you already have code capable of sending emails :) Just my opinion!
All in all, thank you very much for making this project. It's a relief not to have to install cygwin and a billion other dependencies just to run an rsync.
As I think about it, the Task Manager is so robust and feature rich in Windows that I'd probably just use that in most cases.
I'm not sure it's even a good use of your time for you to be re-implementing task manager inside of Acrosync, since people can just the use task manager. And it appears there are some relatively lightweight (without needing cygwin etc) tools for sending mail out there, so I can use those if i need it.
If anything, I would like it if acrosync had a more robust command line (ideally just use the command line parameter syntax from rsync) so that it can be more easily driven from scripts without needing to set up anything in the gui beforehand.
Yes, Task Scheduler is what I would recommend if you need more advanced features. Because of this I don't see a reason to upgrade the Acrosync scheduler.
As for the command line mode, I don't like the idea of having too many command line arguments. What I can do is to provide an option to load the profile from a description file in a json format and run the profile without saving it to the registry. Currently the 1.5 version I'm working on already has the ability to load a json profile file so the changes will be minimal.
Does the json command line loading feature that you mentioned above exist in the latest version of acrosync?
To be clear, I would like to be completely not dependent on the registry, so i'd like if acrosync could run totally from the json file i provide, no registry keys needed.
The current version can load a profile from a json file using the --create option. However, the profile will be written to the registry. A registry independent version needs more work.
To clarify, is it currently possible to run an acrosync profile from a json file I created with --create?
If so, what's the command line switch to load the json file?
Also, if i run a profile with the command line switch, it's not going to try to read anything from the registry, correct? acrosync is only reading things from the json file to determine what to do?
If you meant loading the profile from a json file and running the profile with one command, the answer is no.
The --create switch only reads the json file and creates the profile in the registry. It doesn't run the profile:
AcrosyncClient64.exe -create <json file>
The profile will be saved in the registry and next time you can run the profile with the -p switch:
AcrosyncClient64.exe -p <profile name>
When Acrosync loads the json file, it basically creates a string registry value for each json key-value pair. So for the profile to be runnable by the -p option, you must have a 'name' key in your json file.
Sorry about the delay. Unfortunately I'm lagging behind in my other project. I hope to come back to Acrosync in the next month and start working on version 1.6 by then.
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