dockerfiles VS DecSync

I'm aware of that approach for Python, and Bundler can be configured to do a similar thing for Ruby. Those are good approaches for development environments (though I generally prefer Docker for those these days), but for system tools I think that's just kind of a hassle and I don't want to do it.

For a tool I install & use, my happy path is "install it with my package manager, and then stop thinking about it". Upgrades will happen whenever I decide to ask my package manager to upgrade everything. (I use Arch Linux, so that's usually once or twice a week.)

Needing to hand-setup an installation like that for a program makes me cranky. I've certainly done it when there wasn't a good alternative (and also occasionally wrap programs in docker containers as well if it's easier - https://github.com/wfleming/dockerfiles), but it's the kind of thing that makes me pause and reconsider whether I really care enough to use whatever the program is.

A few years back I used to use SyncThing + DecSync for that purpose, and it worked quite well. Looks like it hasn't been updated in a while though.

https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync

DecSync

There is decsync that works pretty good on Android. It stores contacts & calendars in a text file that can be synced with syncthing. There is a plugin for Evolution (Linux Mail client) but none for Thunderbird. But there is a plugin for Radicale, which is a caldav server. So you can run a local caldav server, connect Thunderbird to it and sync the decsync database with syncthing to your phone.

DecSync works with Syncthing to sync contacts and calendars.

I am a bit puzzled why so few people use DecSync and Syncthing for this?

I found some discussion here which is confusing when it says it wasn't designed to function this way when their own documentation seems to indicate otherwise.

I'm fine with either paying for software, or self-hosting something. If I go the self-host route, however, I would need to start and learn completely from square one. I saw some options in my searches that required software on my own server, but I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. DecSync came up in my searches, but based on the description I'm not sure if it would be linux only or not. (I'm on windows)