Version Control

[Joris Dobbelsteen]

(``-_-´´) -- Fernando wrote, On 02-11-08 23:01:
> Due to some bug with kdepim and the way it corrupts its configuration on power failure (gnome-power manager wasn't hibernating my laptop on time, so I had to rebuild my Kmail configuration, accounts, transports, filters, folder tree proprieties, etc, 3 times, a real pain in the butt), I started using Bazaar to keep its settings just in case.

File a bug against kdepim or at least contact its developers. They 
should take some (more extensive) measures to prevent corruption in case 
of power failure (well, at least to some degree).

> It seemed so nice that I made 3 bzr repos: one for /etc (I guess a simpler version of etckeeper), one for hand selected conf files on $HOME, and one for an encFS crypt personal documents dir.
> 
> Well, Olive-gtk can't really handle large amounts of documents on a branch, and there must be a memory leak somewhere on bzr add, because after adding some JPGs it starts eating all my RAM and SWAP (I have 4+8 GiBs). But then again bzr is not meant for binaries files, I guess.

Todays version control systems should be able to handle binary files. 
They are quite common, imagine pictures and several documents, which are 
also put under version control.

> The reason I'm emailing you guys and galls, is to ask if someone recommends any other Version Control System, that can suit my needs of safe guarding my confs as versioning, plus binary files.
> AFAIK git aint that good, because each commit will store ALL files, and not just the updates.

I actually think: what you actually want is backups, rather than version 
control. I do not think you are interested in tracking you entire 
history, but rather restoring the last known good state. I would start 
looking at backup tools instead.

I can tell you the following:
SVN will handle binary, BUT it will duplicate you data locally, as it 
keeps local copies for offline diffs and such. CVS is older and will not 
keep copies, however its commits are per-file and failure will result in 
a partial check-in. I've seen mercurial, but can't comment on it.

I would rather advice: go for backup tools, I think it suits your needs 
a lot better. You might wanna pick rsync.

> Also it would be nice to see some tool result from this and be included into Jaunty. I remember reading about something called TimeMachine, but I have no idea how that is going.

- Joris