jboyer
June 23, 2022, 5:57pm
1
The seaDRIVE root folder path always includes the (seafile) username of the person logged in. Can this be changed? We need a generic folder path so another program can refer to it on anyones workstation. ty - John
1 Like
Itâs not supported. You may be able to create a symlink to the seadrive root folder.
Johnny
January 31, 2023, 10:24pm
3
Hi Jonathan,
Iâm having the same problem as John, with my team.
Iâve tested symlink, subst and net use.
But they all have big caveats.
symlink
and subst
are not respected by all programs.
Git for example will break through the symlink to the real path.
And net use
or mapping the folder as a network drive adds a heavy performance penalty.
Iâve written a detailed post about the issue.
Custom SeaDrive root possible?
show full post...
What I mean by custom root is the ability to customize the root drive and folder SeaDrive uses.
For example my current path on Windows looks like this:
S:\seafile\John\My Libraries\âŠ
At the moment I only have control over a limited part of that path.
I can choose the drive letter.
I can/have to choose the root folder - seafile .
I can choose my name - I guess.
I canât change the âmainâ library containers - âMy Librariesâ , âShared with allâ , etc.
Now I generally donât like paths being âforcedâ on me, but in this case it creates some real problems.
Hereâs a non exhaustive list of problems:
First and foremost there is a whitespace in the path - MyđLibraries.
This can result in many hard to debug problems when using those paths in certain software.
Like Python, Rust, Blender and Nuke, just to name a few.
My name is part of the root. In my case thatâs not that big of an issue. But I do have a special character in my last name. Having special characters like ö,Ă€,ĂŒ,etc. will almost certainly lead to problems.
The path I get will always be different to the path someone has who Iâve shared something with. Thatâs a recipe for long nights of debugging. Why is it working for me, but not for them?
And here are some workarounds Iâve tried:
Using Mountain Duck and WebDAV to see if I can choose a mount point.
I stopped trying as sync performance via the WebDAV protocol is terrible.
Using the subst
command in Windows to mount a folder to a drive letter.
This works for some applications, but breaks Git and VSCode .
Unfortunately Git seems to break through the substitution and uses the real path.
Using the net use
command in Windows to mount a folder as a Network Drive.
Again this works for some applications, but unfortunately has a big performance hit.
Especially the VSCode intelesense server seems to struggle a lot.
So now at the end of a long âworkaroundâ day I would like to ask the big question:
Is there a way to change the root path? And if not - Is that something to implement?
Here are some ideas how to implement, going from âbasicâ to "ideal. imho.
Remove the user name. Let each user choose a directory where their files should live.
And allow the admin to predefine the exact names for the four main library containers.
The names change already based on the language setting. So changing them manually shouldnât be to hard?
Result â S:\seafile\custom_name\my_library\âŠ
Remove the user name and mount the four main library containers directly to a drive letter.
Same as before - allow the admin to define the names for the four main container folders.
Result â X:\my_library\âŠ
My ideal solution: Allow the user to mount one of the four main folders or any library directly to a drive letter. This would be ideal as regardless what kind of library it is, my own, one shared with me, or a global one, I can control the entire path.
Result â X:\âŠ
Thats it. Thank you for reading. And I hope youâll consider my points.
I just switched from Nextcloud and am very happy. Just this one thing and its âperfectâ.
Cheers J
It would make a huge difference and resolve all the hacky workarounds if we could define the root path ourselves. I would love to see some form of customization implemented.
Cheers J