"Last sync" not updated when path does not match because of symlink

[Konzertheld]

Hello everyone,

this is more of a very specific issue but I noticed that several people complain about problems with the "last sync" # of days in the forum so maybe this helps some. Not sure if it should be considered a bug but I wanted to publish my findings.

I have a bash script that runs several FreeFileSync jobs from batch job config files. That script is somewhat old. I recently moved the folder where those config files are stored and added a symlink to the new folder so nothing breaks. The syncing did not break indeed but the "last sync" info is no longer stored. In the GUI, I added the config files from their real path and the "last sync" info updates when I run from GUI.

I then figured that the "last sync" and log info are stored in the GlobalSettings.xml along with the jobs' config file paths. Turns out that FreeFileSync matches the jobs using the path and as the path does not match because the call in my bash script relies on the symlink no update of GlobalSettings.xml is performed.

I changed the paths in my bash script to the real paths and everything works fine.