Dropbox needs plain lock file names

[TomHaws]

Refer to LibreOffice lock files and Dropbox

The referenced question/answers did not have complete information. I talked to Dropbox and they very satisfactorily explained that they do not synchronize hidden/system files because those files are used/named differently on different operating systems.

AutoCAD’s file locking system, for comparison, uses *.dwl and *.dw2 files (in the past ten years, AutoCAD added a second redundant lock file because they wanted one in XML format and they preserved also the legacy lock file) that are plain text and visible. This locking system syncs find with Dropbox.

Would it be possible for LibreOffice to add a lock file system that has plain (synchronhizable) names and plain-text contents?

[mikekaganski]

LibreOffice uses plain text lock files. And the files aren’t system (only hidden). AutoCAD also uses hidden lock files, so I don’t understand the reasoning behind Dropbox reply.

Anyway, changing the locking scheme seems unreasonable. Even if it happened, DropBox synchronization is too latent to be good for locking, and several users opening the “same” file ~simultaneously would all have writable documents, with a mess afterwards when all except the last one will loose all edits(I know what I’m talking about, since I made such a mistake once with another SW while being sysadmin). This problem is absent with network shares or WebDAV or CMIS, so no use to make changes that will not be useful anyway.

[TomHaws]

All I know is that Dropbox synchronizes *.dwl and *.dwl2 files (which is helpful to us), but not the .~lock.*.ods# files from LibreOffice (which is not helpful to us). I assume that this is a Dropbox design decision to treat that file as a system file that is used/named differently on different operating systems.

1. Can you confirm that .~lock.*.ods# files have the same name across all operating systems?
2. Is it worthwhile for somebody knowledgeable to evangelize Dropbox on this?

[mikekaganski]

@TomHaws

1. Can you confirm that .~lock.*.ods# files have the same name across all operating systems?

Yes I can.

@TomHaws

2. Is it worthwhile for somebody knowledgeable to evangelize Dropbox on this?

I do not understand what “evangelize Dropbox on this” might actually mean. If you mean “to try to persuade Dropbox devs to support LO/OOo/AOO locking”, then it’s you (who needs that) who can answer this. IMO, no; using Dropbox and such for real-time file sharing is plain wrong; and any organization would better use solutions like Collabora Online, allowing to have proper collaborative editing.