How to Install Unison on Void Linux

Unison is a file-synchronization tool that allows you to keep files and directories synced across different computers or environments. Here's how to install it on Void Linux.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

Before installing Unison, make sure your system has the following dependencies:

  1. OCaml compiler
  2. GTK+2.0 or GTK+3.0
  3. libcurl

Open a terminal and run the following command to install these dependencies:

sudo xbps-install -S ocaml gtk+3 curl-devel

After the installation is complete, move to the next step to get the Unison files.

Step 2: Download Unison

  1. Go to the Unison website (https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) and download the latest version (currently 2.51.2) of Unison.

  2. Extract the contents of the tarball into a directory of your choice.

tar xvf unison-2.51.2.tar.gz
cd unison-2.51.2

Step 3: Build and Install Unison

  1. Run the following command to build the Unison binaries:
make UISTYLE=text
  1. Install Unison by running:
sudo make install

If everything goes as planned, Unison will be successfully installed on your system.

Step 4: Running Unison

Now that Unison is installed on your system, you can use it to sync files between different directories or systems. Here's an example of how to use Unison to sync files between two directories:

unison /path/to/dir1 /path/to/dir2

This will compare the contents of the two directories and sync files that are different.

Conclusion

That's all there is to it! You've successfully installed Unison on your Void Linux system and you're ready to start syncing files between different environments.