It is kinda lame that other services, e.g. Google Drive, just skip symlinks, but that isn't as dangerous. The hierarchical structure of a directory tree is often effectively part of an application's data, and Dropbox silently corrupts that data. This can cause crashes, or multiple conflicting copies of not-easily-merged data to be strewn about in different places.

It's also hard to initially notice how broken it is, since symlinks work on the first machine where Dropbox encounters them, but then on all subsequent client devices that Dropbox sees are replaced with some version of whatever data they point to.

What's even worse, is that no matter how hard I try, I am not able to convince most people of how wrong this is--even those who claim to be and should be computer savy. E.g., on support forums for other sync services, users are typically clamoring for Dropbox-style syncing of symlinks, and they will not be convinced otherwise, in spite of all reason. And despite 30 years of hard-earned experience with symlinks that irrefutably demonstrates that transparent syncing of symlinks is nothing but badness.

But thank goodness that BitTorrent got it right!

This correct solution is precisely what BitTorrent Sync provides. So that's all the more reason to be thankful that a seemingly excellent sync solution has finally arrived.

http://help.cubby.com/forums/169907-general/suggestions/3529...

What if you treat DropBox as a raw, strict hierarchical store and never use it directly, but only link into it from elsewhere? Move all the links outside of it.

    ln ~/Dropbox/photos ~/Photos
    ln ~/Dropbox/family/baby/cute-movies ~/Photos/baby-cute-movies

(2) Your suggestion is extremely difficult or impossible to do in the general case.

(3) I have better things to do with my life than rearrange my entire filesystem to suit the ill-conceived whims of a product that does the wrong thing.

(4) I would like to sync parts of my filesystem as they currently are.

(5) I have my own syncing solution that works better for my needs, and it only took me a couple of hours to throw together.

(6) I'm going to use BitTorrent Sync in the future for most of my syncing needs (as long as it turns out to be reliable) since it does syncing properly in the face of symlinks.

(7) I'll still use Dropbox for simple sharing of files with friends and getting files onto my iPad. Apparently, Dropbox just doesn't care about the needs of more sophisticated users, as that isn't a very large market.

The tradeoff is to have all your stuff in one place, with is not a good thing most of the time IMO. A frequent problem I stumble on: there is a work folder where everything is already on svn/git, but I'd want to temporarily sync a few folders to dropbox only when needed, and get them out of dropbox when finished. As dropbox works now, to do this without using symlinks would be a PITA (I'd have to put all my files in the dropbox folder by default, and then play with the selective sync ? I am not even sure there is a way to do it without moving files around).

If dropbox had support for arbitrary multiple folder selection (but the the complexity would go way up?) I'd agree with your stance on symlink, but now this is more of a necessary evil.

I think you already answered your own objection on the right way to handle this need. Other syncing services, including BitTorrent Sync handle your need in precisely this manner. I.e., the right way. Dangerous, frustrating, and incorrect abuse of symlinks is NOT the right way to do this.

I was curious about this myself, but I never tried it, as I feared that this was precisely the badness that would occur.

Dropbox is so good in so many respects, I just can't understand how they could have made such an utterly terrible and wrong decision on this particular issue.