kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Autosave is independent of the back up file.

On 6/29/2020 6:22 PM, Jeff Young wrote:
> How does the current backup file strategy interact with the autosave feature?  If autosave works without it, that might address a lot of these concerns.
> 
> 
> 
>> On 29 Jun 2020, at 23:13, hauptmech <hauptmech@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>> While I agree that it is not KiCad's job to do archival backups or version control, I do think that KiCad should preserve the integrity of users data through a crash. Even better if the work between the last save and the crash is also preserved and recovered on restart.
>>
>> I have had to use the backup files to recover data in the past. I have no idea if that recovery was related to something that is now no longer a possible issue.
>>
>>
>> -Hauptmech
>>
>>
>> On 6/30/2020 7:23 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
>>> Currently, KiCad automatically creates backups of schematic and PCB
>>> files when you save a file.
>>>
>>> The logic for these backups is basically: if a file already exists
>>> with the same name as what we are saving, copy that file to a new file
>>> and give it the "-bak" suffix on the file extension.
>>>
>>> These backups are stored next to the original file in the current
>>> KiCad codebase.  This understandably creates clutter that some people
>>> don't like (myself included) so in the project-settings branch that is
>>> about ready to be merged, I changed this behavior to place all these
>>> backups in a special backups folder for the project.
>>>
>>> This proved to have some complications around the handling of files
>>> outside the project path (which it's possible to have with
>>> hierarchical schematic sheets) so I need to do something else.
>>>
>>> After some thought, I am pretty convinced that the right thing to do
>>> is just *remove this backup feature entirely*.  Here's why:
>>>
>>> 1) It's not a very good backup:  It just stores the state from the
>>> last time you hit "save".  If you hit save again, your backup is blown
>>> up.  So, it's really like a "undo" function, but on disk, and with
>>> only one level of undo.
>>>
>>> 2) Recently I changed how we save schematic and board files to fix
>>> some unrelated issues people were seeing with cloud backup services.
>>> Before this change, if KiCad crashed or had some other serious error
>>> while saving a file, the file would be lost (because we used to delete
>>> the old file and then write a new one in its place).  After this
>>> change, we write the new file to a temporary location, and only if
>>> that write succeeds do we copy it on top of the old file.  I think
>>> this vulnerability to generating corrupt files if we crash was one of
>>> the reasons for this backup file system, and that reason is now gone.
>>>
>>> 3) Because it's not a very good backup, I worry that the fact that
>>> "bak" files exist might cause some users to have a false sense of
>>> security and not use a true backup system (like a version control
>>> system, or some other mechanism that actually backs up files
>>> periodically).  I want to remove this false sense of security so that
>>> it is more clear that users should back up their files in some way if
>>> they care about the work.
>>>
>>> In other words, I don't think this feature actually gives enough value
>>> to make it worth the clutter in the project folder and/or the
>>> development effort to make it work well with less clutter.
>>>
>>> So, I'd like to hear from others on this: anyone disagree?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Jon
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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