#47 Handling Dropbox Infinite

[ferguspa]

Dropbox announced their Project Infinite feature:
https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project-infinite/
https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-project-infinite/

In short it creates stubs for files contained on Dropbox, stubs that transparently download the actual files when the stubs are accessed.

Currently the beta for Infinite (which I am part of) reports the full size of the file to the Finder, but reports the stub size to a command line tool such as "du". If you're interested in supporting Dropbox Infinite let me know and I can run sample code and tests for you.

[Erwin Bonsma]

Thanks for making me aware of this Dropbox feature. Given that a tool such a "du" reports the stub size, I hope that this can be obtained using an API that is part of the standard OS. First I will handle Bug #46, which should ensure that the size of files that are HFS-compressed is correctly reported. With a bit of luck, Project Infinite changes are similarly visible. So once I have fixed Bug #46, I will ask you to see if that also correctly reports the Dropbox stubs.

[Erwin Bonsma]

Can I ask you to check one thing? Does the File size measure you can configure in the preferences make a difference? There are two settings, Logical and Physical. I hope that the latter actually reports the true disk size of the Dropbox stubs.

Note, after changing the preferences, you need to scan again for the setting to be effective. It will not change sizes in old views.

[ferguspa]

Yes--in the attached screenshot the "logical" "File size measure" is on the left and the "physical" "file size measure" is on the right. The "physical" matches "du".

[Erwin Bonsma]

Thanks for reporting back. Good to hear that the Dropbox stubs are implemented such that GrandPerspective already supports it. I will therefore close this ticket.