Versioning and Backup

[colindavidfoster]

There are a few posts on the forum that raise the question of enhancing the backup feature, possibly with the ability to keep multiple backup copies, throwing away the oldest.

There is a application called FileHamster which has a nice way of doing this, and I'm sure there are other dedicated backup programs that can perform a similar task.

It strikes me that I could achieve this functionality in BC if there was a "call out" feature that would call an external application (dos batch file, perl script etc) just before BC is going to copy/move a file over another file, passing the two full pathnames as command line parameters.

This would need to be configurable on a session by session basis, rather than a blanket setting in the Options as is the case with the existing Backup Files Before Copy/Save options

[Aaron]

Hello,

We don't have a Call Out feature. But we do support an Open With feature which offers similar functionality (but doesn't get called automatically). It is configurable under our Tools menu -> Options, and you can assign keyboard shortcuts to the Open With call. How does that work for you?

[colindavidfoster]

I was hoping for an automatic call-out so that it would work seamlessly within the synchronize/copy to left/right process.

My only other thought on how to do this would be to use a BC script to get the list of files that is going to change, process that list to version the files that are going to be overwritten, then do the actual synchronize for real. This has pros and cons. It has the advantage that the processing of the list is a single part of the process, rather than the call-out being called time and again for every file that is going to change. It has the dis-advantage that determination the list of files to change would have to be done twice. It's a long time since I did any BC scripting for backup type purposes so perhaps this three stage process could be optimized with a bit of thought.

I still think the call-out technique would suit my day-to-day needs better. BC is such a useful tool already: it would be the icing on the cake

[Aaron]

Hello Colin,

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added it to our Customer Wishlist.

Script is another way to approach this. If you can wrap your other program into a .bat file, you can have that .bat file also call BC and run a @BCScript.txt file.

[Ernie]

Colin,

This thread may be of interest: http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ead.php?t=5927