When changing sync target to an empty target, Joplin behaves very oddly

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Joplin version at the time of sync target change: 2.5.12 (AppImage, official build).

Linux Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon x86_64 (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base)

Moved from: When changing sync target to an empty target, Joplin behaves very oddly. · Issue #5904 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub as more of a discussion topic and very hard to reproduce (though I am willing to try when I have the time and inclination).

Steps to reproduce

I think this might be hard to reproduce, but here's exactly what happened for me:

  1. Start with Joplin syncing with Dropbox with 1000s of notes, some small, some big with attachments, some webpages.
  2. Create a new empty local filesystem sync target folder (in this case in pCloudDrive, but shouldn't matter as just behaves like local storage).
  3. Check the failsafe to prevent deleting is on (it was).
  4. Change settings in Joplin and click sync.
  5. Joplin starts adding notes to the sync target, but then also starts deleting others, so some notes are synced and some are deleted (no pattern I could identify).

I wish this was something easier to reproduce, but I'm really not sure what happened.

Describe what you expected to happen

Having read the docs, it seems like either Joplin should try to delete all the notes (and hence be stopped by the failsafe), or sync all of them (hopefully). I have no idea why it would do some of both.

Also, why exactly is it that when presented with a new empty folder, and knowing the settings have just changed, that pCloud would try to delete notes? Perhaps it could be improved to recognise that scenario and behave differently, or ask the user what to do?

Logfile

Sorry, this was from a little while ago and I wasn't aware of this feature.

Now I've completed the template I've sort of realised that this isn't a very easy-to-diagnose/reproduce bug report. I will try to provide any more information if that would help though, or run some more tests (I have a spare machine which I can use for that).

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Whether you previously used filesystem sync would affect how the new sync behaves, so maybe that's why you're seeing results that are hard to explain.

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Oh no, was unclear, I was using Joplin's Dropbox option to sync before, rather than using the Dropbox client and local FS target with Joplin.

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