about :: the Local Backup feature (or not)

this Local Backup is a drag (as in: a no-go)

1st: it tends to take (lot of) space on your disk
2nd: you don't have direct access to it, you have to do the operations via the wuala client (so whatever want to store, you have to store them once in another folder, then import them in wuala, them remove the "another" folder)
3rd: you/I don't (always) need/want a Local Backup

how it should have been done?

the sole reason for the Local Backup seems to be to refresh your wuala pieces with the p2p network (if one remote client/piece is dead or disappears, if the user updates something, etc); this can be done in some other way,,,

lets presume first you don't need a Local Backup (since you're not that paranoid or you don't have that much free space; remember? backups tends to grow big... it's not some 10mb you play around with)

wuala should use only a customizable cache (for upload/download/pieces/encryption/etc) and a shared space (= space you give in order to receive some extra space in the p2p network)

every time you want to store something, wuala would encode it, split it, upload it and remove the parts from the local cache.

then, your/each wuala client being part of the p2p network should check its shared space and make sure (upload/replicate/etc) that (the shared) pieces stored locally maintain a certain level of redundancy within the network.

in this design, if you want to be extra safe you enable your own Local Backup; if you want just to be cool.. then you don't enable it :-)

also, if you enable Local Backup, then you should have direct (file) access to it in order to perform rsync or other (smart) operations to it. wuala client should be able to take one (or several) file(s) at the time from the Local Backup, play with them = encode/split/compare with remote pieces/upload/etc then clean the used part of the cache space.

tadaa...