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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