Dropbox is becoming more useful by the day, what with more and more services coming with built-in support for Dropbox. Sadly, Delicious Library is not one of them (yet, AFAIK).
Fortunately, there is a way to make Dropbox and Delicious Library play nice, providing us with synchronized Libraries across multiple Macs. I think the original hint is here, but that one didn’t quite work for me, so I edited the Terminal command slightly. To make thing even easier, you can drag and drop files – or, in this case, folders – from (Path)Finder straight to a Terminal window.
1. Assuming you already have a populated Delicious Library, quit the application, open (Path)Finder, navigate to your Dropbox folder and create a folder called AppSync.
2. Within this folder, create a folder called ‘Delicious Library 2′ (without the quotation marks).
3. Now go to your homefolder in (Path)Finder, and into the Library subfolder. If you’re on Lion, you’ll likely not see this folder as Apple has, in their wisdom, decided to hide it form the user’s prying eyes. In this case, hit the Go menu in Finder, then press the Alt-key and select Library (this tip will not work with PathFinder. It’s also a temporary solution; if you want something more permanent, there’s tons of hints available through Google). Once you’re inside ~/Library, go to Application Support and find the folder called Delicious Library 2. Copy the contents of this folder into the Delicious Library 2 folder in your Dropbox. Then, delete or rename the folder inside Application Support (you did quit DL2, right?) – make sure you have a copy or backup somewhere, so don’t empty the Trash yet!
4. Now enter the following in Terminal (using your own username, doh!), and press Enter:
ln -s /Users/yourusernamehere/Dropbox/AppSync/Delicious\ Library\ 2 /Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Application\ Support
It creates a symlink from the Delicious Library 2 folder inside Dropbox straight into the Application Support folder in your User Library.
If you like to drag and drop, start by typing ln -s in a Terminal window, then d&d the Delicious Library 2 folder from Dropbox, and lastly d&d the Application Support folder in your User Library – the result should be the command you see above, but with you own username already filled in.
5. Restart DL2, and see if it loads normally. If it does: hoozah! If not, you kept a copy of your original DL2 Library, right?
6a. On other Macs, or if you ever decide to reinstall OS X, install Dropbox and allow it to sync completely (there should be a green checkmark next to the menubar icon). Then install DL2, but before running it for the first time, run the Terminal command for step 4. If you started DL2, and it created a new Library: quit DL2, go to ~/Library/Application Support and delete the Delicious Library 2 folder there, then run the Terminal command from step 4.
6b. Open DL and if all went well, you’ll be greeted with your populated Library!