Re: [rdiff-backup-users] The rdiff-backup poll!

[Blair Zajac]

Ben Escoto wrote:
> How do you think rdiff-backup should be improved?  Help me prioritize
> rdiff-backup development by taking the rdiff-backup poll!  See:
>
>         http://www.misterpoll.com/3662297208.html
>
> For current feature suggestions see:
>
>         http://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?group=rdiff-backup
>         http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/?SuggestedFeatures
>
> And of course more in-depth responses to the mailing list are very
> welcome.
>
> Oh, and please answer relative to the development branch (1.1.x).  If
> you are using the stable branch, the development versions basically
> adds longname support, some Mac-specific fixes, SHA1 hashs, some more
> compare options, and cleaner error messages.  (It's also slower.)

Thanks!  I just voted.

The one feature I think would be handy would be reporting of what was added or 
deleted that caused a huge backup.  My normal nightly backups are around 20 
Mbytes, but last night I got one that was 220 Mbytes and I'd like to figure out 
what changed that caused this.  Some report by directory, say like a du output, 
of changed file size would be nice.  Directories with no changed wouldn't be 
printed.

Out of this list

http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/?SuggestedFeatures

I would vote for the following features in descending order of importance:

* RemoveSpecifiedFiles - --remove Removes specified files from rdiff-backup 
archive
* DeleteIntermediate - Remove intermediate backups, retaining older ones
* RemoveOlderThanAllowsSubdirectories - argument to --remove-older-than can 
specify a subdirectory
* UpdateErrorRetry - Retry to copy files with update error later
* BackupFromRsyncd - Allow rdiff-backup to get snapshot from an rsyncd daemon
* SparseFiles - handle sparse files well

Nice to have, but not necessary:
* DetectMoves - Detect file moves
* Psyco - use the Psyco JIT compiler to speed things up
  I run these jobs at night.

In the "How buggy do you find rdiff-backup?", you might want to add a level 
between "Very buggy" and "Found a few, but nothing serious".  I'd hate to call 
rdiff-backup very buggy, otherwise I wouldn't use it and I love this program. 
On the other hand, I did run into that KeyError bug in 1.1.3 which prevented a 
backup from working and the Mac OS X issues, so it hasn't been un-serious.  I 
didn't vote for that section.

Regards,
Blair

--
Blair Zajac, Ph.D.
<address@hidden>
Subversion and Orca training and consulting
http://www.orcaware.com/svn/