Does Nextcloud have, or has there has ever been any talk about, the ability to replace infrequently accessed files stored in one’s Nextcloud-desktop folder with something equivalent to hard links to those files on the server? It seems to me that the last time I used OneDrive (a few years back), it could do this, and other than setting the infrequency threshold, its operation transparent to the user.
The goal of this, of course, would be to (transparently) reduce local disk space usage. If access to any such file broke the threshold for infrequently accessed, the file on the server would replace the “link” in the desktop folder. The threshold for infrequent access would likely be some accesses-per-time interval (user-define, of course
I’ve googled this topic and searched in the Nexcloud forums, but don’t see a reference to this kind of feature. Perhaps I’ve missed it or it aged-out?
Nextcloud doesn’t have a built-in feature like OneDrive’s “Files On-Demand” yet, where infrequently accessed files are replaced with links to save space. While there are some options like the virtual file system or external storage app, they don’t fully automate the process you’re asking for. Keep an eye on updates, though, as this might be something that comes up in the future!
@ricowr you are looking for virtual files or VFS this is shipped for long time in Windows client and has experimental support for Mac and Linux now.
@Hank-Ross this is not true. VFS (on Windows) provides exactly the same functionality as OneDrive - could not be different as it uses same operating system libraries. For Mac and Linux this might be different. with VFS local files are not fully “hydrated” on the client and only download on demand from the cloud: docs
Ah, but I am very happily living exclusively in linux-land. And as that Fleetwood Mac song goes… “Never going back again.”
It is very encouraging to hear that VFS is moving forward for linux. And given some free time, I may get around to playing with it. However, I can’t put non-production features into production. So for now, I’ll just have to keep my eyes on initiative. Any target “stable” release dates?
Since you’ve indicated in your post that the Mac/Linux version of VFS may differ from the Windows version, can you say at this point whether or not those versions of VFS will have “auto-dehydrate” capabilities?
Thanks for informative and very helpful reply. I hadn’t seen that part of the Client Manual.
The whole point of VFS is about having small placeholder file locally and load contents on demand. Windows was I think the first OS shipping this integration built-in into the OS. I’m not sure if Linux has widely adopted the VFS concept (maybe different concepts for every windows manager) so this is natural support comes later here - AFAIK there the client completely manages the heavy-lifting of de-/hydrating the placeholder files. Look at the client Github repository for latest news.
