CLI FTP client for Windows?

I just tried the open-source NCFtp (NCFtpPut), but it uploads all the files, even those that didn't change on my client host, simply due to the files using the server's time when they were uploaded.

Do you know of a good FTP client for Windows that can upload only those files that changed (based on their size), and can recurse through directories?

Thx

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

Hi

Look at psftp from  http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Martin
Monday, November 10, 2003

Thx but PSFTP is just NCFTP, ie. interactive FTP, doesn't seem to support recursion, the documentation says nothing about the time/date issue, and it seems like it only works through a SSH tunnel :-)

http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.53b/htmldoc/Chapter6.html#6

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

check out if curl <http://curl.haxx.se/> supports the features you need. it definately lets you automated upload and download, but it may not have synchronization features.

Beyond Compare is often cited here, it might be automatable to do what you want.

mb
Monday, November 10, 2003

NcFTP does support recursion using the -R flag. I can't see a way to compare local/remote files built into the client, though. Is a scriptable ftp client necessarily what you want? There are plenty of mirror scripts/packages out there that use ftp for transport, check out CPAN for some exmaples of PERL ones.

Anonymously yours
Monday, November 10, 2003

Yes, I know about -R in NcFTP, but this software will upload all the files from the client hosts, even those that didn't change (but NcFTP thinks otherwise since files are often saved on the FTP server using the date/time on the server).

I experimented with curl... but nowhere in the documentation does it mention recursion, and this doesn't work:

curl -T *.* -u jdoe:mypasswd ftp://ftp.acme.com

What tools do you use to upload the changes you made to your web site? Surely, you don't upload the entire directory and its sub-directories every time?

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

OK, for those interested, download the latest Windows (now, Total) Commander, connect to an FTP server, and choose Commands | Synchronize Dirs. Make sure you check "Ignore date", or this might cause problems, as explained in the help file. Check Subdirs if you want WC to dive into sub-directories also. You'll get a list of any change in the tree, however deep the location.

Thx everyone for the help :-)

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

NetLoad is a FTP client which is especially designed for this, and does it well.

MX
Monday, November 10, 2003

Cool :-) Looks just as good as WC. Thx!

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

Beyond Compare does this sort of thing too.

mb
Monday, November 10, 2003

Indeed, except it's much slower. Looks like it downloads each file locally to perform a byte-per-byte comparison to check if the files are indeed different. Maybe this is optional.

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 10, 2003

Regarding NetLoad and Total Commander, am I missing something? Does CLI mean something other than "command line interface"?

Philo

Philo
Wednesday, November 12, 2003

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