[Discuss] Possible backup scenarios for a 500GB drive

[Lloyd Budd]

On 10/28/07, Daniel M German <dmgerman at uvic.ca> wrote:
>
>  >> Daniel, what is subversion like to set up? ..... too easy, easy, OK or unix
>  >> man page hard?
>
>  Alan> I am sure Daniel will want to answer this question, but I would like to
>  Alan> answer as well because I have had a lot of really good recent experience
>  Alan> with subversion as a result of converting 6 different SourceForge projects
>  Alan> from CVS to subversion, and then just using subversion from then on for each
>  Alan> of the projects.
>
> [...]
>
> I fully agree with Alan and his message. Just one comment: its use is
> orthogonal to other backup systems: i.e. you can still mirror the
> disk.
>
> Check this: http://kitenet.net/~joey/svnhome/

Bending the task to the tool? Active revision management for mostly
non-collaborative files seems like an over-engineered and awkward
proposition to me.

Subversion doesn't doesn't work transparently, doesn't have a true
move/replace, and has weak merges. If you manage subversion with
people that don't think in revision control terms, you will soon
understand subversion's weaknesses.

"The basic design of the working copy has two rules: (1) edit files as
you please, and (2) use a Subversion client to make any tree-changes
(add, delete, move, copy). If these rules are followed, the client can
sucessfully manage the working copy. If renames or other
rearrangements happen outside of Subversion, then the UI has been
violated and the working copy might be broken. The client cannot guess
what happened."
http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#wc-change-detection

Try replacing a folder with a folder of the same name with different content.
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.ref.svn.c.move.html

Merges have to be tracked manually.
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch04s03.html#id2715170

I don't have much experience with any other RCS than subversion, so I
don't know what is better.