Problems I have encountered using Dropbox:

  • Dropbox storage space available for use is really low, and is consumed relatively easily because of the .git folder.
  • Dropbox real time sync has issues with git if multiple computers work on a project simultaneously. Although, it has been rare that I have encountere this.

My current solution for this problem is as follows:

  1. Move the most space consuming .git folders outside of Dropbox. This way Dropbox won’t be syncing these large folders.

    • Note: If using Dropbox “ignore-a-folder” attribute, then also delete the dummy .git folder containing only an empty index file. Instead create a text file named .git in the main working directory that points to the actual .git folder saved outside, using the Step 3 below. The Dropbox “ignore-a-folder” command is:
xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored 1 '/Users/yourname/Dropbox (Personal)/YourFileName.pdf'

  1. Place the transplanted .git folders inside the Google Drive folder, so that Google Drive sync the git history and I don’t have to do git pull origin main all the time.

  2. Use git --git-dir <<PATH>> to link the git repo to the history. Have the working tree in the same directory as before. The full command below also adds the .git folder path to the pseudo-git dir located in the working dir.

git --git-dir=<<PATH>> --work-tree=. init && echo "gitdir: <<PATH>>/.git" > .git
  1. In the second step above, we can have the .git folder placed outside any particular cloud storage, in order to never encounter any sync issues with cloud syncing of changes in the .git directories. But the only drawback of this will be that I will to pull from the Github remote repo at the start of every session.

My full command including the paths look like the following. Notice the use of \ when the path string is unquoted:

UTokyo_MSc_2022-23 on  main [?] via 🐍 v3.9.6
❯ git --git-dir=../../../../suyog999.sg@gmail.com\ -\ Google\ Drive/My\ Drive/Dropbox-.git-storage/UTokyo_MSc_2022-23/.git --work-tree=. init && echo "gitdir: /Users/suyoggarg/suyog999.sg@gmail.com - Google Drive/My Drive/Dropbox-.git-storage/UTokyo_MSc_2022-23/.git" > .git
Reinitialized existing Git repository in /Users/suyoggarg/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-suyog999.sg@gmail.com/My Drive/Dropbox-.git-storage/UTokyo_MSc_2022-23/.git/
UTokyo_MSc_2022-23 on  main via 🐍 v3.9.6
❯ gs
On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Some additional tips and suggestions:

  • Try to work on only one computer for a project at any given time. Dropbox real time syncing may have conflicts working with git.
  • Maybe ignore all PDF files and large-sized from git. This solves the storage problem in the long run, however, doesn’t affect the storage space used up by the git history already.

References: