Feature request - Always include folder pair in log file

[Doug0366]

I am new to FreeFileSync, and using the command line:

  FreeFileSync BatchTest.ffs_batch -dirpair C:\Source D:\Destination


When one or more files are synchronized, the log includes the helpful message:

  Info: Synchronizing folder pair: Update >
      C:\Source
      D:\Destination


However, when no files are synchronized (ie: no differences), the log file does not include the folder pair. This makes it impossible to use the log file to determine or confirm which folder pair FreeFileSync synchronized or to which folders the log refers.

It would be very helpful to always include the folder pair in the log file, regardless of the result of the synchronization.

[xCSxXenon]

This doesn't seem to be accurate, here is the log file created when I run FFS via command line similar to your example

2024-03-30 14_45_48-[FreeFileSync] Tech Backup ✔️.jpg (41.18 KiB) Viewed 138 times

Even when the directories are empty

2024-03-30 14_48_41-[FreeFileSync] Tech Backup ✔️.jpg (28.72 KiB) Viewed 129 times

[Doug0366]

Thank you, xCSxXenon.
I changed my FreeFileSync v13.4 synchronization from Update to Mirror (as in your example), disabled Versioning, selected HTML logs, and restarted my Windows 11 computer. The result remains the same: no folder pair in log file when nothing to synchronize. HTML log file:

FreeFileSync-Log.png (14.46 KiB) Viewed 129 times

Any other suggestion as to what I may be doing incorrectly?

[xCSxXenon]

Not sure... I'm guessing you are doing anything "incorrectly", just something weird and unintuitive is going on. Maybe Zenju will have some insight or insider knowledge

[Zenju]

There's an inconsistency in the code that skips the "synchronizing folder pair message" when there's nothing to do for a folder pair, except when the DB file needs to be saved. Arguably the message should be skipped in the later case too, when no files will be synced.

Especially when using many folder pairs the message seems to add more noise than signal when no file copying actually occurs. Which folders are part of a sync job should be known to the user and probably does not need repeating. The above scenario with using "-dirpair" is an exception of course.