Google currently don't produce a Linux variant of their client for Google-Drive. This is my implementation of a multiplatform, command line tool that for the most part, is intended to behave much like rsync. I aim to follow the same functional implementation of rsync and also provide the same features, enabled or disabled through a similar interface of command line options.

There was a close contender for being a suitable client called grive. This is ideal if you only intend to sync a small library of files or if the files being synchronised are small in size. I found the client to be unreliable in other cases, crashing and failing to synchronise very little. I looked over much of the code and found that it favours preloading with a hash of the directory to be synchronised and all sub directories, before it even synchronises any files. This creates a scenario where synchronisation will never take place if the preloading fails. Instead, I will opt to process directories depth first and sequentially in order to allow synchronisation to occur immediately.

The only prerequisite is that you have python. The makefile will take care of installing any required python libraries using pip, which will also be obtained.

Donations:

If you like the software, don't forget to donate to further development of it!

https://github.com/iwonbigbro/gsync/wiki/Donate

My Blog:

http://mud-slide.blogspot.co.uk/

Installation:

The GSync package is now available on pypi.python.org. It can be installed using pip. I recommend using pip over easy_install or pypi-install, since pip takes care of dependencies through setuptools. I have found that easy_install only checks for dependencies but doesn't actually install them. On Debian I installed using the following steps:

$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

$ sudo easy_install pip

$ sudo pip install gsync

To upgrade gsync, you can run pip with the --upgrade option:

$ sudo pip install --upgrade gsync

That's it. GSync will be installed along with any required packages.

Authentication:

Authentication occurs just once, the first time a connection is established with your drive. To establish a connection, just specify the --authenticate option with no other options or arguments:

$ gsync --authenticate

Or alternatively, just specify a drive source or destination file like:

$ gsync drive://somepath/in/your/drive ~/some/local/path

It will provide a URL for which you can obtain a GUID from Google that you paste into the command line prompt. Once authenticated, it caches the GUID in your ~/.gsync directory. To force authentication, just remove this directory.

See: https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2

RSync options implemented so far:

-v, --verbose enable verbose output

--debug enable debug output

-q, --quiet suppress non-error messages -c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size -r, --recursive recurse into directories -R, --relative use relative path names -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver -d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing -g, --group preserve group -o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only) -p, --perms preserve permissions -i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates --progress show progress during transfer

For a list of known issues: