Last Updated on June 23, 2023
Summary
Unison is a reliable and mature file synchronizer. It offers an incremental backup solution. Unison can be deployed to synchronize files between systems running different operating systems, to backup systems, or as part of a content deployment system, among a plethora of other use cases.
Unison offers both console and graphical versions. Unison can be setup to run on a schedule. This can be done by uses the “cron” scheduler.
You can set it up so any change on either file system is automatically replicated to the other side. Unlike rsync, it’s not just a one-way synchronization. Unison synchronizes in two directions at one time, while rsync only goes in one direction. And Unison is capable of one-way synchronization as required.
Unison definitely warrants inclusion in our Essential System Tools. While Unison is no longer under active development as a research project, it’s still maintained and supported software.
Website: www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison
Support: FAQ, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Benjamin Pierce leads the Unison project. The current version of Unison was designed and implemented by Trevor Jim, Benjamin Pierce, and Jérôme Vouillon, with Alan Schmitt, Malo Denielou, Zhe Yang, Sylvain Gommier, and Matthieu Goulay
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Unison is written in OCaml. Learn OCaml with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary
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