Adding Sync Gateway bucket to existing system

[Traun Leyden]

If a system starts out with a "normal bucket":

and then later Sync Gw is added to the picture, such that the normal bucket then becomes a "shadow bucket":

Will the Sync Gw bucket be "fast forwarded" so that it contains all the data that was originally contained in the shadow bucket?

[Adam Fraser]

Yes - on Sync Gw startup it will process the shadowed bucket's history and copy the data over to the 'sync gw' bucket.  

This is covered in the documentation here.  Relevant excerpt:

When you start the Sync Gateway, it will run through the app bucket's history (also known as its TAP feed), copying any new or changed documents into the gateway database. Depending on how large the bucket is, this may take a while. Unfortunately there's no way to bypass this on subsequent launches of the Sync Gateway, due to limitations of the TAP feed implementation.

 When the documentation refers to 'copying any new or changed documents' above, it means any documents that are 'new or changed' from the SG bucket's perspective - it's processing the entire shadowed bucket's TAP feed.

- Adam