Dealing with macOS Versions feature and file syncing services

I've just done some experimentation and have some tantalising results.

1. I created a Pages document, entered "Step 1" and saved.
2. I then copied the file using cp, and opened the copy in Pages as well.
3. In the new copy I added the line "Step 3" and saved.
4. I then replaced the original file with the modified copy using mv.
5. I returned to the original open document in Pages, made an edit and closed it to generate the dialog at the heart of the matter:

I then tried each option, with very surprising results!

1. Revert Changes - even though the dialog says this will restore the version "you last saved", it actually does not change the file, preserving the "Step 3" changes made in on the other instance!
2. Save - even though the dialog says this will save the changes, it actually produces a new dialog that looks like this:

This time, the three options actually do what they say! What a relief to see "Save As..." make a return.

Note that the wording in the first dialog is quite deliberate, despite being wrong. If you open the file without making a save, the wording changes to "...since you last opened the document.".

So this seems like great news - the "Revert Changes" button is actually the old "Don't Save" button, dressed up in the new tricky "Cloud era" language.

Next to confirm - are cp and mv actually doing some magic behind the scenes or will this work using an ignorant third party application?

I managed to find one related report, but it was just a call for discussion that didn't go very far. I have this growing fear that the era of the Mac power user is receding and 1984 will be upon us after all... Re: What happens to Versions if I collaborate on a Pages document in a Dropbox share with someone running SL?

Thanks for the info etresoft. To be clear:

• The experimenting I did was just for fast experimentation purposes - my actual workflow is in the first post and has nothing to do with mv/cp/vi/ssh/Terminal. At least for now that workflow is still possible, hence the success claim.
• I'm not interested in real-time collaboration (and when I am I'll use a tool designed for that purpose).
• I've been using this workflow long before Versions existed, using whatever file syncing tool was flavour of the decade at the time, and it only broke when Versions was introduced.
• There is no way I can guarantee that I will have closed all the files I was working on on one computer before I start working on them on another computer. I stopped doing this around the same time I stopped shutting down my computer every time I finished using it (remember those days?). Unfortunately when I'm on the train with a laptop it's too late to realise the errors of my ways and close all the open files on my desktop computer 100km away.
• My files are organised by project, not by application. There is no way I'm going to use a different file syncing tool depending on the version of software used to create that file and the type of file I want to sync! Actually... that's not entirely true - I did concede that the 1Password database file (which is a package) needs to be synced by a dedicated service, not a generic file syncing service, and so did 1Password (who kindly built that feature into their app so I didn't have to open yet another account).

Your general cautions are well taken. I'll remain wary and with the sickening feeling that computing is going downhill.

Good question, was wondering the same thing. One would imagine they've built in a provision to deal with this scenario. Maybe by notifying the open application when a newer version has been synced to disk or something?

But then again, there'd be a whole heap of workflows disrupted by these changes and there's not much evidence they've strived to support the established practices. For example, opening a file to make a temporary change (eg. hide some columns to print a spreadsheet or experiment with a modification to a drawing and then abandon it) is only weakly supported now - there's a System Preference setting that allows you to prevent your temporary changes from overwriting what's saved, but it's off by default and I feel is only a temporary holdover.

I've never been a big fan of relying on workarounds or non-default configurations for core functions. My preference would be to learn the intent of the new paradigm and become proficient with it. Only now I'm losing faith that the new paradigms do have any provisions for efficient use. More and more technology is about finding better marketing for worse ways to do old things.

Oh boy, when did I become such a curmudgeon? Probably around the time writing a post on an Apple support web forum means being interrupted every couple of minutes with errors and notifications about failing to save copies of my post and offering to recover from auto-saved versions with impossible dates. I kid you not, it's like it is baiting me.

Yeah, that was going to be my next port of call. It would be my last resort though, because after Box have modified things to support the new system I'd then have to contact Dropbox. And Transmit. And rsync, and sftp, and vi, and Subversion, and git, and SnailSVN, and... I think you see where I'm going with this. I doubt all of those software providers are going to be receptive, so you're always going to have some software that modifies a file on disk without knowing it then has to notify open applications (or whatever the fix needs to be).

Fixing it in one place (Versions, eg. by responding to changes to the file on disk) seems like a much more fruitful path.

Ha! Do you mean, why doesn't every file system have feature parity with Apple's file system? Seems like a bit of a pipe dream.

I don't know. It seems to me that macOS allows applications to make changes to files on disk, even if that file is open. Pretty standard behaviour, been solved for decades (usually by some prompt that says "the file on disk has changed, do you want to load the new changes?", or at the very least allowing the file to be closed without changing what's on disk). Now Keynote, which knows all about Versions, does not prompt to load the new changes and has removed the ability to close without changing what's on disk.

What the third party file system is is largely irrelevant - the OS accepts writes to files on its file system. If one makes use of that feature, but the file is already open, the OS no longer provides a mechanism for the open file to not overwrite the changes.

Success!

I used Pages to create a document, saved it to my Box Sync folder, ssh'ed to another computer that is synced to that folder, modified the newly created file using vi (corrupting it, but nonetheless modifying it), waited for that to sync back to the original computer, and then tried closing the original document.

I was presented with that deceptive dialog in my previous post, held my breath and clicked "Revert Changes". Hoorah, the changes weren't reverted, but retained - the file was indeed left corrupt!

I also learned that the "Revert" button in the second dialog also doesn't revert, but leaves the file alone.

Naturally my heart is going to skip a beat every time I use that "Revert Changes" button, so I'll probably continue to make duplicates for the time being, but hopefully by the time I feel confident with the new paradigm it wont be time to change it...