Brackup file handling tweakage

Gavin Carr gavin at openfusion.com.au
Thu Aug 28 11:57:33 UTC 2008


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.

Thoughts/comments?

Cheers,
Gavin



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