Brackup file handling tweakage

[Gavin Carr]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 09:57:33PM +1000, Gavin Carr wrote:
> Some suggestions/comments on the current handling of "brackup files"
> (i.e. the .brackup output files produced by brackup, particularly 
> the client side versions).
> 
> 1. I wonder if the default format should 
> SOURCE-TARGET-YYYYMMDD.brackup, rather than the current
> SOURCE-YYYYMMDD.brackup? Most people may well only backup to a single 
> target, but anyone who does backups to multiple targets on a single day 
> will end up clobbering their (client-side) brackup file. You can 
> workaround this by explicitly specifying --output, of course, but for 
> newbies that's not at all obvious (and neither is the fact that you can 
> restore your brackup file from the server, so losing that file can be
> initially a bit scary).
> 
> 2. Taking that a step further, I think the ability to clobber an
> existing brackup file at all is ugly. What do people think about 
> some kind of noclobber scheme like just adding trailing integers to 
> brackup file names to uniquify them i.e.
> 
>   SOURCE-YYYYMMDD.brackup
>   SOURCE-YYYYMMDD.brackup.2
>   SOURCE-YYYYMMDD.brackup.3
> 
> ? I know this again probably won't in practice affect that many people
> (since you have to be doing multiple backups on the same day), but for
> people that DO do this I think it adds an extra security factor (and 
> lets you be lazier, which is always good).
> 
> 3. I wonder if it would be good to support specifying --output files 
> using some kind of macro syntax so you don't have to explicitly 
> replicate parameters you're already passing to brackup e.g. I'm 
> wondering about something like:
> 
>   --output %S-%T-%D.brackup
> 
> to specify SOURCE-TARGET-DATE format, or some such.

No thoughts on any of these? Any objections to me going ahead and 
adding them then? I guess #2 and #3 are relatively unobtrusive, but 
I'd like to see comments on #1.

Cheers,
Gavin