It’s a brave new world for users of Syncthing, the cross-platform, open-source folder sync tool that can securely and effortlessly traverse continents as well as the next room. A new landmark release, Syncthing 2.0, has been dropped.
Version 2.0 is a major release that upgrades the underlying database from LevelDB to SQLite and makes some significant other under-the-hood changes. It comes with the promise of faster scan and sync times, along with improved reliability, administration and maintenance.
On updating, users may need to wait a while before the web-based interface becomes available to them – this is because the initial database migration can take some time. However, once complete, users should find the new interface snappier, with initial scans completed much more quickly.
Another noteworthy change is that deleted items are no longer kept forever in the database – they’ll be forgotten after six months unless users manually set a command line flag (--db-delete-retention-interval) to their choice of time interval or zero to disable it completely.
Those using Syncthing via the command line will also need to become accustomed to changing all single-dash options like -help to --help. Other options have been renamed or relegated to subcommand status.
The improved scan and sync times is in part due to the dropping of support for rolling hash detection of shifted data; another tweak helping speed up file sync is the switch to using multiple connections – by default, three are set up (two for syncing data, the other for index metadata).
One final notable change is to the way conflict resolution handles deleted files. Deletes are now permitted to be the 'winning' outcome of conflict resolution, which means the deleted file is now moved to being a conflict copy.
The new release is a potentially breaking one – for example, those using the original Synctrayzor on Windows machines will find that Syncthing is no longer able to start due to an unknown flag (-n), which has been removed in version 2.0. The solution is to switch to a fork of the original Synctrayzor, but note this is currently in beta, so use with caution. You may also need to manually recreate your folder partnerships.
Despite the changes, users can continue to sync data with those running the older 1.30 release for now. For a complete list of all changes, including bug fixes, check out the project’s Github release page.
Syncthing 2.0 is available now as a free open source download for Windows 32-bit and 64-bit, Mac and Linux. It’s also available in Docker container format. Access is via the command line and the web, or users can explore GUI frontends like Synctrayzor 2 or Syncthing Tray.
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