Merging folders via Cyberduck

The curl program could help you download an FTP file, but it specializes in one-off URLs (http, ftp, etc). It is possible to use Perl to script something up to list then download, but its much easier to use wget!

However, wget is not a standard program of OSX so you will need to manually download, compile, and install it (relatively easy task, as long as you have Xcode installed.)

1. Install Xcode from the App Store.
2. Download wget source
3. Open a Terminal into the directory you saved the source.

Run the following commands:

    $ tar xfvz wget-latest.tar.gz
    $ cd wget-*
    $ ./configure && make

The wget binary will be produced in a src subdirectory. From here you can run the binary directly as ./src/wget or install into /usr/local/bin:

    $ sudo make install

Now, you only need to run wget -r ftp://username:passwd@server/path/to/download and your FTP site will be recursively downloaded from that path!

Just remember that the /path/to/download is relative to the username you login with... and FTP passwords are notoriously unsecure :)

Old question, but here's my answer:

I use a Unix tool called Unison. This is a command-line tool that allows for two way sync.

The good is that it's highly configurable: ignore certain file names, directories, synchronize multiple folders, which side wins in a conflict, many other things.

The bad is that you have to not be scared of the command line and both the server and the client have to have Unison installed; both installations need to be the same version and built with the same version of OCAML.

But I've been using it multiple times an hour every work day for the past year and it's been awesome -- it's really fast, really easy to fire off from the command line.