Automatic file upload

Question

Is there any way, any free software capable of automatic file upload? Let's say I edit php code on my local computer with my favorite IDE. I won't change my IDE, it's great. I want something that would detect a file is changed in my project directory and upload it with FTP/SFTP onto remote server. That's it - just that simple.

What I've already tried:

FTPDrive + FileSync Eclipse Plugin - it's quite slow, uploads ALL the files way to often, works buggy under Vista and Windows 7.

WinSCP automatic synchronization - bugs again, refuses to upload files randomly. Would be the best if it worked right.

Eclipse's native SFTP support - it's USELESS! You cannot use PDT projects with this feature. PDT without projects is no better than Notepad++.

Aptana FTP feature. It's worse than manual! Gawd, it sucks!

Running my own PHP/MySQL server under windows. First, it took me ages to set it up, then, it didn't work EXACTLY as my production environment - I hadn't been able to test my code correctly.

How it should work? I change file here, and it's uploaded there. It would be best, if it sit quietly in tray and bother me only if upload error occured.

Ok, if it's not free, maybe there's something cheap at least?

If there's nothing like it, is there something like FTPDrive?

Answer 1

In the rails world, we tend to use source control and a deployment tool like vlad or capistrano. It's a bit safer and more consistent than FTP. This is a guide on how to use it with svn and php http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2006/08/16/automated-php-deployment-with-capistrano/.

You really should try to get your development server running on your personal machine. It's a much better way and it is worth the initial pain of trying to make it work. There are good tutorials on that out there somewhere.

Answer 2

rsync does exactly what you're asking.

Well, almost: it doesn't watch your filesystem and automatically upload files - you'd have to set up a task to run it every minute or whatever. But it does efficiently upload only the changes. If you're on Linux, lsyncd does the watching part and drives rsync to do the efficient upload part.

Answer 3

You can use WebDrive or ExpanDrive, mount a complete remote directory as a local disk drive and directly edit your files on the server. However this highly depends on your connection and how your tools are written. Another approach could be to use one of these tools and with another tool sync all the changes asynchronously.