@Peter Fargo, I tried to respond to your post in the Beta forum, but I think that is locked down since the latest update has been released. I think this is ok to post here since it didn’t appear to me that your issue is related to the beta in any specific way, and anyway it’s now released so…
I have a theory about your issue which may not be that well developed, but here it is in case it helps.
Since you are running in a VM on your Mac, is there a possibility that you are using the “merged” folders feature of Parallels and the drop box syncing and parallels merging are involved in some kind of weird interaction that results in the symptoms you are seeing? Are you running drop box on the mac as well as the VM and the two dropbox clients are stepping on each others toes?
Maybe try turning off all the Mac/Win integration options of the VM so they are completely separate and see if that fixes the oddities.
@Kevin Windham Thanks for the idea. I do have “Shared Cloud” on in Parallels to conserve disk space. I am careful to never run Xojo on both sides at the same time but maybe something there has gone awry. My setup has been the same for at least 5 years without this ever happening. Of course Xojo, Parallels and DropBox all have fairly frequent updates. I actually have identical setups on a mac mini at work, my MacBook Air and MacPro at home. Both instances occurred on my work machine. They all have the same OS, VM, and Windows versions. It is also the first time I’ve experienced this since starting with RealBasic in 2000. There are too many variables to point any fingers but since it has happened twice since r2 I want to be sure I am alone in having the problem. I am fortunate that Xojo’s save before run coupled with DropBox’s keeping multiple versions of the temp save files allowed me to recover. Thanks again for your input. If I can figure it out I will certainly post my findings.
I dont think running Xojo ob both has anything to do with it.
I do that through a shared rive on Parallels with OS X and Windows and Linux VM’s.
I am careful to not modify it in both while they re both open as thats certain to cause issues.
However, we HAVE seen a number of reports about issues specifically mentioning DropBox on the forums
You could probably search for dropbox & find several
Yeah - I’m leaning towards DropBox being the culprit mainly because in the second instance I quit Xojo with no issues and the next day (today) the project was gone. Not only was it gone but there was no revision history for it in DropBox. Fortunately I did a search by modification date and found several revisions of a file named “TempSaveFile695400780” with mod dates of yesterday. I checked the most current one and it was the latest revision of my project. So I owe a tall cold one to the person responsible for the auto save on run feature
Any recommendations for reliable DropBox alternatives?
I know a lot of people use dropbox and similar services, but I never really felt comfortable with them enough to start using one. I don’t have to do much syncing now since I use my laptop for everything, but I’ve used various tools or scripts based on rsync and they’ve always been quite manageable and functional.
Now I mostly rely on time machine to a mac mini server for backups.
I did try the bittorrent sync recently and found it’s interface horribly kludgy. I just ended up deleting it.
I heard box.com was pretty good, but I’ve never tried it.
I use Dropbox as secondary storage / sharing. I work on a local copy and sync changes to Dropbox. That setup keeps me one step removed from changes made elsewhere so I get a chance to review and merge changes. Of course, it finally occurred to me that I was using it like a version control system, so I’ve abandoned it in favor of a true source code control system.
[quote=181993:@Peter Fargo]Yeah - I’m leaning towards DropBox being the culprit mainly because in the second instance I quit Xojo with no issues and the next day (today) the project was gone. Not only was it gone but there was no revision history for it in DropBox. Fortunately I did a search by modification date and found several revisions of a file named “TempSaveFile695400780” with mod dates of yesterday. I checked the most current one and it was the latest revision of my project. So I owe a tall cold one to the person responsible for the auto save on run feature
Any recommendations for reliable DropBox alternatives?[/quote]
Google drive is nice and has the same notion of local folder.
But I use Github for my code. It lets me create branches and go back to previous versions, while storing on the cloud. Of course it is not free for private projects, but I think it is worth it.
I’ve gone down the version control path a few times. I actually understand the concept well but for some reason always end up in a mess. To me it is like using Xcode. Very powerful, very useful but so much going on my head swirls. Although not the best format for coding large, often modified projects Xojo’s binary format is refreshingly easy on the brain.
Ive just realised i’ve been seeing this since moving to 2015r1. its happened about a dozen times this week. I can recover from deleted files, but its really annoying!
not sure if its something to do with a dropbox update, or Xojo, but since i’m paying Dropbox for the pro version, i’m going to raise a ticket with them and see what they say.
[quote]Please note that Dropbox should never modify or remove your files. The Dropbox application simply watches your Dropbox folder for changes and syncs any changes that occur across your connected devices.
[/quote]
so if they are correct, i must mean that the IDE is deleting it
If the IDE were nuking projects indiscriminately we’d have an enormous uproar.
Only people using drop box see this occur.
Which leads me to continue to believe its “something” about drop box and how it presents itself to the OS.
But I have no idea what.
Dropbox presents itself as a backup service and tries to take priority. OneDrive and Google Drive both will see that something else is accessing the file and skips the file to sync later instead.
I have to believe it is DropBox because I had a file that I had saved to DropBox. I opened it the next day, modified it, saved it and quit Xojo. The next day it was gone. Not only was it gone but there was no Dropbox backup of the file. It was as if it never existed. I did, however, recover the file from a temp##### file which WAS a DropBox backup. So… They had a copy of the autosave file that Xojo creates when you run a project from the IDE but no copy of the File that I was running ??
I have used DropBox for years and never had a problem. I am not anti - DropBox but I don’t see how Xojo could delete the file AND all backups of the file from DropBox. I’ve moved back to Git for versioning. I will use DropBox as I always have but will no longer run Xojo projects from my DropBox account.
@Russ Lunn Is Parallels involved in your scenario in anyway or another VM?
unless its a windows update, i’m using the same version of dropbox i’ve had for ages, because i don’t update it.
so the only thing ive changed is xojo and windows updates.
maybe there is something changed in windows (or maybe my antivirus, ESET)?
Not DropBox, Not that specific Xojo Release.
I have the same problem - lost my file twice now.
Windows 7 Pro (same as original post; except not a VM)
*GoogleDrive sync (different than original post)
*Xojo 2016r1.1 (different than original post)
Happened twice this morning after Xojo quit (First time it crashed and shut down by itself. Second time I saved project to external drive (save as) (to protect it), then closed that project window (intending to open the original file)). In both situations when I went to open the original project file it was not found, and indeed it was deleted from my hard drive!
Here is the original post in this thread - from Beta forum - and as mentioned above, I could not reply to that original…
Peter Fargo 22 Apr 2015 Beta Testers, Xojo Pro New England
Preface: The files involved are run from my DropBox local storage which I have been doing for years with no issues.
I’m posting this in beta because it is the 2nd similar incident I have had in the last week using 2015r2 and this time 2015r2.1rc3. The other incident involved a saved project going missing after not accepting to restore found changes after a crash. It wasn’t the changes that were missing but the project itself. I was able to recover the file from my DropBox deleted files - although I had never deleted it.
This time a project I worked on yesterday and saved without issue was missing this morning. The file was nowhere to be found on my local DropBox storage, DropBox deleted files or anywhere else. I was able to recover my work through a TempSaveFile on Dropbox (thank you Xojo for this safety net).
I’m trying to determine why these projects are disappearing - once as if I had deleted it and the other as if it had never existed?
Both times Win 7 Pro running in Parallels VM, Host OS X 10.10.3
When it comes down to it, this is no different than DropBox or OneDrive. Do your work in a safe folder then copy them to the online storage folder when you finish.
