Nothing happens when selecting the Synchronize menu option of a folder that's parent of a UDF

[jatoo]

Steps to reproduce:
    1. Create several files in the 'Documents' directory, and a subdirectory called 'Papers' with several files in it.
    2. Right click on 'Papers' and go to 'Ubuntu One -> Synchronise this folder'
    3. Go back up one level and right click on 'Documents' and click 'Ubuntu One -> Synchronise this folder'

what should happen:
    The directory and subdirectories should begin synchronisation with Ubuntu One (or at the very least an error stating that the folder could not be added to Ubuntu One).

What happens instead:
    Absolutely nothing

ubuntuone-client:
  Installed: 2.0.0-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 2.0.0-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.0-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.0.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main i386 Packages
---
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta i386 (20110921.2)
Package: ubuntuone-client 2.0.0-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Tags: oneiric running-unity
UbuntuOneSyncdaemonExceptionsLog:

Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i686
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm admin lpadmin sambashare

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

apport information

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

apport information

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

apport information

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

apport information

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

I can confirm this bug.
You can't synchronize nested user-designated folders. So the correct behaviour would be to get an error when you try to sync the parent.
Even better would be not to show the Synchronize menu option on the parents of UDF folders, as it is done on child folders.

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

Leo: rather than showing an error or indeed not even showing the option, wouldn't better behaviour be to sync the parent and everything in it? After all, this is what the user is asking for.

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

Well, it would be nice to have; but I suppose there's a got reason for not having nested UDFs. In this case it might be possible to do a workaround, something like removing the folder as a UDF and adding its parent instead. I don't really know if that's possible, or how hard it is, or if it would make a mess with the synchronized files. Let's wait for a developer to take a look at this.

The short term solution is an error message, for sure. A better solution is not to offer the option while it's not implemented.

[jatoo (wainwright-alex)]

"Removing" the folder and adding the parent instead is what I expected to happen (by removing I just mean that I expected the parent folder to be sync'd and the sub directory to be implicitly included as per normal, no longer explicitly included as before). I would argue that if a user asks to sync the parent folder, this is what they would expect to happen, and anything other than this will come as somewhat of a surprise.

If a user desires the parent directory to be synchronised, but cannot because of this issue, I think they are likely to remove the subdirectory manually, and then add the parent directory to get what they want. If this is what a user has to do, why not have Ubuntu One do this for them? Even if it can't keep those files on the server without resynchronising them (which is obviously ideal) this workaround is still better, in my opinion, than doing nothing, as it does what the user would have to do anyway.

If this isn't done, I would say that a descriptive error message would be more appropriate than simply removing the option, as the latter would leave the user unable to synchronise their folder, with no idea why, which I image would be even more frustrating.

That's just my opinion, so feel free to ignore it :)