Monitor Directory for new files/saves and auto-upload on save

This is a feature of WinSCP that I LOVE. WinSCP is great, unfortunately it's about as stable as a tower of Jenga blocks and cannot maintain open connections with improperly(?) configured FTP servers.

Basically the feature allows the user to press CTRL+U and setup directory monitoring which will upload any files that change in the directory or its sub-directories while monitoring is on. It's probably the best thing since sliced bread. For web developers it is tops. I can work on multiple parts of a project in various directories and just hit save on everything, it all uploads, and I can test my changes. It's almost like working in a local dev environment.

This sounds like a rather interesting feature.

So basically you set it to monitor a directory for file changes and then when a change is detected it automatically uploads any file that has been modified.

What important options should be provided with such a feature?

For example should it automatically upload the files, prompt, or perhaps queue them?

Should it use the skiplist transfer rules, selective transfer rules, both, or allow some additional configuration as well?

What about sub directories, would it monitor these as well?

Perhaps it should sync local deletes and new folders as well?

How should it handle the file transfers, should it automatically overwrite the remote file or resume it? Should it use the global and/or site transfer rules or perhaps override them?

Often when I change a config file the file size doesn't change, just the value of a single byte may change.

There are lots of details that will need to be worked out before such a feature can be implemented, the more detailed and specific you or anyone else can be on how such a feature like this will operate will speed up the process.

I've never used a feature like this before but it sounds very promising.

I would love to hear opinions from everyone who would use this feature as well.

If you'll remember, this was actually going to be part of the pro tools feature set, as it was requested long, long ago . I'd love to see it!

@ bigstar

Thank you for your reply!

>>What important options should be provided with such a feature?
-For my use the core idea of this feature is saving time! So when I hit save I would want it to just upload & overwrite. If it could do *just* that I would be happy! If you want to get complicated, syncing things like deletions, new folders, new files, etc, that would be really nice as well. If I could optionally perform a sync of the directory when activating monitoring that would also be a plus. (so if I create a bunch of files offline then fire up FlashFXP and monitoring it asks me do I want to sync changes/diff or something like that)

>>For example should it automatically upload the files, prompt, or perhaps queue them?
-Definitely auto-upload.

>>Should it use the skiplist transfer rules, selective transfer rules, both, or allow some additional configuration as well?
-Additional configuration performed through syncing would be excellent.

>>What about sub directories, would it monitor these as well?
-Yes, I believe that it should monitor all sub-directories of the directory that is being monitored.

>>Perhaps it should sync local deletes and new folders as well?
-Yes, would be great!

>>How should it handle the file transfers, should it automatically overwrite the remote file or resume it? Should it use the global and/or site transfer rules or perhaps override them?
-Overriding the transfer rules would be optimal, but defaulting to the global/site rules makes sense.

+1 for this feature.
It's also very important for me to monitor complete directories.
Are there any status updates?