VMware Fusion's shared folders suck

The Intel Mac and virtualization were a godsend for me, I could do cross-platform development all on one machine. No more sitting at a desk with a Mac and a PC, switching back and forth between keyboards and mice. I could get OS X, Windows 2000, XP, Vista and whatever Windows variation I wanted all packed up in a MacBook Pro.

My initial allegiance for virtualization was VMWare, they were established in the market and I had heard good things about their products. The Parallels beta changed that, it was available much sooner and it worked. I got my ideal system up and running in short order - Windows 2000 in a virtual machine running on OS X. Sweet! (Like a BMW with whitewall tires)

Shared folders were the first thing to be configured, I set them up and off I went on my merry way. I do my Windows build on OS X using a cross-compiler, and run it from the shared folder in Windows land. I bought Windows XP and Vista and was extremely pleased with the setup. They all shared the same folders and it worked like a champ.

At some point a few months back my machine locked up and I had to do a hard power down. Not thinking much of it at the time Parallels was running XP. A month or so later (I use Win2k regularly) I would discover that my XP virtual machine was trashed. Not knowing when it got trashed I'd have to dig through my backups for a good copy, annoying. But no rush, I could use 2k and Vista.

I recently began playing with OpenGL again in an attempt to get NSOpenGLView functional in Cocotron. The OpenGL performance on Win2k in Parallels is not very good so I was looking to use XP more often. I figured what better time than to give VMWare's Fusion a shot with a fresh install.

Setting things up were as painless as Parallels, I installed XP, set up the shared folders and started to use it for real work.

Then I started doing some head scratching.

I would make changes to my programs and they would not show up in Windows land. Fix a bug and it would still be there. Try to add some debugging output and it wouldn't show up. What the hell. The shared folder became a suspect. What I would come to discover is that changing a file on the Mac side would not necessarily show up on the Windows side. This was a complete hassle for me.

My workaround is to delete the file on the Windows side, then copy it in on the Mac side. It works, but what a goddamn headache. It should just work. Shared folders have always worked for me in Parallels , but shared folders in Fusion are broken in a final release product. Sigh!

All the fancy features are lost in this one basic thing.