[Discuss] Possible backup scenarios for a 500GB drive

[Daniel M German]

 Lloyd> 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?
 >> 

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

I agree with everything you say here.

But it you follow certain discipline it is doable.

I also use RCS for version control of files that are difficult to keep
under version control, such as when I modify /etc files (I usually
keep the older versions using RCS). I would be a pain to use
subversion for those files.

--dmg


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Daniel M. German                  
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dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
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