Non-interactive command-line FTP client alternative to weex

Question

Hi,

I'm looking for a good non-interactive, command line FTP client to be run from a Rakefile. Like Weex, but better. Weex has different problems (for me):

• It stores its config file in my home dir. I want the FTP config to be part of my project and weex doesn't have a --config-file option or something.
• The behavior of ignoring files seems to be completely buggy. It doesn't remove files which it should, it doesn't let me specify relative paths, even though I do it according to the man page's instructions, etc. I've been struggling with it for an hour now and it is just completely inexplicable.

I tried running rsync over FTPFS/FUSE, but that is dead slow because FTP doesn't store mtimes, which makes rsync diff every file. Plus, there are some refresh problems and other bugs that cause access failure (http://bugs.gentoo.org/208168).

I'm stuck with FTP, unfortunately. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Perhaps something from the ncftp suite (http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/)? This has the ability to specify a config file of your choice and tools to operate non-interactively (ncftpget/ncftpput).

It doesn't appear to have ignore functionality, but hopefully this was helpful to you..

Answer 2

I've used lftp in the past with good results. It's installed by default in many distributions and offers pretty sophisticated functionality (including a couple ways to exclude files).

Answer 3

try sitecopy: http://www.manyfish.co.uk/sitecopy/

Answer 4

The trouble with lftp is that it is very slow for mirroring--which I suppose you want to do since you have been using weex.

Unfortunately, both weex and sitecopy have very limited proxy handling, so if you need to go through a HTTP proxy, lftp may still be your best bet.