Subversion for backups?

Subversion for backups?

[Kyle Sexton]

I've seen talk of people using subversion to keep track of and back up
their org files.  Can someone give me an example of how they have this
configured and how files are checked in/out from the repository?  Do
you use a 'local' repository on the same machine and back that up
remotely or check your files out to a remote subversion server?

I was going to do something simple like setting up rsnapshot to create
backups of my org directory every X minutes, but subversion has me
intrigued.

-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Bernt Hansen]

Kyle Sexton <ks@mocker.org> writes:

> I've seen talk of people using subversion to keep track of and back up
> their org files.  Can someone give me an example of how they have this
> configured and how files are checked in/out from the repository?  Do
> you use a 'local' repository on the same machine and back that up
> remotely or check your files out to a remote subversion server?
>
> I was going to do something simple like setting up rsnapshot to create
> backups of my org directory every X minutes, but subversion has me
> intrigued.

I use git not subversion but it does basically the same thing.  A
description of my setup is here:

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#GitSync

-Bernt

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Rainer Stengele]

Kyle Sexton schrieb:
> I've seen talk of people using subversion to keep track of and back up
> their org files.  Can someone give me an example of how they have this
> configured and how files are checked in/out from the repository?  Do
> you use a 'local' repository on the same machine and back that up
> remotely or check your files out to a remote subversion server?
> 
> I was going to do something simple like setting up rsnapshot to create
> backups of my org directory every X minutes, but subversion has me
> intrigued.
> 

I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
I have a server in my office running the subversion server.

Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter 
being under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually 
"local", that is acces is always via

svn://localhost/repository


I also track all my .emacs.d specific files, especially the org-mode 
files themselves as well as icicles and all kinds of libraries etc.
This makes it easy to update my whole emacs installation on any of my 3 
desktops and 3 notebooks.

rainer

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Kyle Sexton]

At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:49:41 +0200,
Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele@online.de> wrote:
> 
> I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
> 
> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter 
> being under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually 
> "local", that is acces is always via
> 
> svn://localhost/repository
> 
> 
> I also track all my .emacs.d specific files, especially the org-mode 
> files themselves as well as icicles and all kinds of libraries etc.
> This makes it easy to update my whole emacs installation on any of my 3 
> desktops and 3 notebooks.
> 

Interesting, can you describe your workflow a bit?  

  1. Do you commit a change to subversion every time you update an org
  file, or are commits scheduled through a cronjob?

  2. When you open new files, do you always check them out of the
  repository / work / check them back in?  Or do you work on a local
  directory structure and sync outside of emacs?

  3. Can you post some of the relevant config lines you have, and the
  key sequences you use for commits?  (This may be asking too much. :))

Thanks in advance, I've seen several ways to do this and I'm trying to
weigh the merits of each approach.

-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Kyle Sexton]

At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:49:41 +0200,
Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele@online.de> wrote:
> 
> I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
> 
> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter 
> being under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually 
> "local", that is acces is always via
> 
> svn://localhost/repository
> 
> 
> I also track all my .emacs.d specific files, especially the org-mode 
> files themselves as well as icicles and all kinds of libraries etc.
> This makes it easy to update my whole emacs installation on any of my 3 
> desktops and 3 notebooks.
> 

Interesting, can you describe your workflow a bit?  

  1. Do you commit a change to subversion every time you update an org
  file, or are commits scheduled through a cronjob?

  2. When you open new files, do you always check them out of the
  repository / work / check them back in?  Or do you work on a local
  directory structure and sync outside of emacs?

  3. Can you post some of the relevant config lines you have, and the
  key sequences you use for commits?  (This may be asking too much. :))

Thanks in advance, I've seen several ways to do this and I'm trying to
weigh the merits of each approach.

-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Manish]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Kyle Sexton wrote:
> At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:49:41 +0200,
> Rainer Stengele wrote:
>>
>> I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
>> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
>>
>> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter
>> being under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
>> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually
>> "local", that is acces is always via
>>
>> svn://localhost/repository
>>
>>
>> I also track all my .emacs.d specific files, especially the org-mode
>> files themselves as well as icicles and all kinds of libraries etc.
>> This makes it easy to update my whole emacs installation on any of my 3
>> desktops and 3 notebooks.
>>
>
> Interesting, can you describe your workflow a bit?
>
>  1. Do you commit a change to subversion every time you update an org
>  file, or are commits scheduled through a cronjob?
>
>  2. When you open new files, do you always check them out of the
>  repository / work / check them back in?  Or do you work on a local
>  directory structure and sync outside of emacs?
>
>  3. Can you post some of the relevant config lines you have, and the
>  key sequences you use for commits?  (This may be asking too much. :))
>
> Thanks in advance, I've seen several ways to do this and I'm trying to
> weigh the merits of each approach.
>

FWIW, another informative place for such discussion is vcs-home
mailing list which is dedicated for this kind of discussion.

http://vcs-home.madduck.net/
http://lists.madduck.net/listinfo/vcs-home

HTH
-- 
Manish

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Matt Lundin]

Kyle Sexton <ks@mocker.org> writes:

> At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:49:41 +0200,
> Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele@online.de> wrote:
>> 
>> I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
>> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
>> 
>> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter 
>> being under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
>> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually 
>> "local", that is acces is always via
>> 
>> svn://localhost/repository
>> 
>> 
>> I also track all my .emacs.d specific files, especially the org-mode 
>> files themselves as well as icicles and all kinds of libraries etc.
>> This makes it easy to update my whole emacs installation on any of my 3 
>> desktops and 3 notebooks.
>> 
>
> Interesting, can you describe your workflow a bit?  
>
>   1. Do you commit a change to subversion every time you update an org
>   file, or are commits scheduled through a cronjob?
>
>   2. When you open new files, do you always check them out of the
>   repository / work / check them back in?  Or do you work on a local
>   directory structure and sync outside of emacs?
>
>   3. Can you post some of the relevant config lines you have, and the
>   key sequences you use for commits?  (This may be asking too much. :))
>
> Thanks in advance, I've seen several ways to do this and I'm trying to
> weigh the merits of each approach.

A while ago, I used to keep everything in subversion. If I remember
correctly, I made heavy use of the svn commands ("svn mv", "svn cp",
"svn add", etc.) and used psvn.el to manage my repository within emacs.

I wasn't really worried about keeping detailed log messages so I used a
basic alias:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
alias commit='svn commit ~/mystuff -m "Sync"'
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I just made sure to invoke this regularly.

This is a bit off-topic, but I found the separation of repository and
working files in SVN a bit cumbersome after a while. You can't view your
history when you aren't connected to the remote repository, your history
is in only one place, you have duplicate files in the .svn directories,
etc.

For this reason I highly recommend a distributed version control system
such as git, bzr, etc.. You can start locally quite easily ("git init",
"git add .", "git commit -a") and then decide to create a remote
repository whenever you'd like.

In fact, there's a nice tutorial on this:

http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-vcs.php

Best,
Matt

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Robert Goldman]

Matt Lundin <mdl <at> imapmail.org> writes:

> 
> Kyle Sexton <ks <at> mocker.org> writes:
> 
> > At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:49:41 +0200,
> > Rainer Stengele <rainer.stengele <at> online.de> wrote:
> >> 
> >> I use subversion to backup and track my org files.
> >> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
> >> 

> 
> This is a bit off-topic, but I found the separation of repository and
> working files in SVN a bit cumbersome after a while. You can't view your
> history when you aren't connected to the remote repository, your history
> is in only one place, you have duplicate files in the .svn directories,
> etc.
> 
> For this reason I highly recommend a distributed version control system
> such as git, bzr, etc.. You can start locally quite easily ("git init",
> "git add .", "git commit -a") and then decide to create a remote
> repository whenever you'd like.
> 
> In fact, there's a nice tutorial on this:
> 
> http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-vcs.php
> 
>

FWIW, my feelings are the exact opposite of Matt's --- I find the added
complexity of having multiple repositories to manage and the general added
complexity of git quite unwelcome.

If you are trying to keep multiple machines in sync, I find that a centralized
repository scheme is far simpler:  all you need to do is manage the relationship
between your working copies and the repository, and that relationship is a very
simple one.

If you have a distributed revision control system and multiple different
repositories, you must manage the relationship between the different
repositories and the relationship between those repositories and your working
copies.  Because of the peer-to-peer aspect, this is a complex quadratic mesh of
relationships to manage, instead of the simple linear relationship you have with
a centralized repository.

I would say that if (1) you generally are connected to the internet, with only
minor intervals offline and (2) have access to a hosted svn repository (so you
don't manage it yourself, and so that you can use the simple https protocol
instead of fussing with ssh tunneling), then you are likely to find svn much
simpler.  I am fortunate that both of these hold for me.

That said, if you are already a git wizard, this won't apply...

Best,
r

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Sébastien Vauban]

Hi Rainer,

Rainer Stengele wrote:
> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
>
> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter being
> under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
>
> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually "local",
> that is acces is always via svn://localhost/repository

Just for my own understanding, why to you want your repository to appear as
local?  In case you wanna change the physical location of the SVN server, and
don't want to update any of the working copies?  Something like that, or are
there other major reasons for this setup?

Thanks,
  Seb

-- 
Sébastien Vauban



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Re: Subversion for backups?

[Rainer Stengele]

Sébastien Vauban schrieb:
> Hi Rainer,
> 
> Rainer Stengele wrote:
>> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
>>
>> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter being
>> under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
>>
>> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually "local",
>> that is acces is always via svn://localhost/repository
> 
> Just for my own understanding, why to you want your repository to appear as
> local?  In case you wanna change the physical location of the SVN server, and
> don't want to update any of the working copies?  Something like that, or are
> there other major reasons for this setup?
> 
> Thanks,
>   Seb
> 

Seb,

reason is I use my notebook at home and at work.
At work my repository is under

svn://<server-name in work intranet>/repository

at home it cannot of course be that intranet servername, it would have to be

svn://<server-name as provided in internet>/repository

Having the "localhost" server solves the problem.
I simply use different port forwarding scripts at home and at work.

rainer

Re: Subversion for backups?

[Sébastien Vauban]

Hi Rainer,

Rainer Stengele wrote:
> Sébastien Vauban schrieb:
>> Rainer Stengele wrote:
>>>
>>> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
>>>
>>> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter being
>>> under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
>>>
>>> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually "local",
>>> that is acces is always via svn://localhost/repository
>>
>> Just for my own understanding, why to you want your repository to appear as
>> local? In case you wanna change the physical location of the SVN server,
>> and don't want to update any of the working copies? Something like that, or
>> are there other major reasons for this setup?
>
> A reason is I use my notebook at home and at work.
> Having the "localhost" server solves the problem.
> I simply use different port forwarding scripts at home and at work.

Thanks for the explanation.

Seb

-- 
Sébastien Vauban



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Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Greg Newman]

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In light of this topic I've posted my process using mercurial and bitbucket
from my Mac.  I've added an hourly bash script to my daemons to push to my
repo every hour.  You can get all the details at
http://www.20seven.org/journal/2009/09/backing-up-org-mode-files.html
Cheers,


*Greg Newman*

http://20seven.org

twitter: 20seven

2009/9/2 Sébastien Vauban <wxhgmqzgwmuf@spammotel.com>

> Hi Rainer,
>
> Rainer Stengele wrote:
> > Sébastien Vauban schrieb:
> >> Rainer Stengele wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I have a server in my office running the subversion server.
> >>>
> >>> Access is by port forwarding the subversion port via ssh - no matter
> being
> >>> under windows (putty) or under Linux (ssh).
> >>>
> >>> In this way I have my subversion server and repository virtually
> "local",
> >>> that is acces is always via svn://localhost/repository
> >>
> >> Just for my own understanding, why to you want your repository to appear
> as
> >> local? In case you wanna change the physical location of the SVN server,
> >> and don't want to update any of the working copies? Something like that,
> or
> >> are there other major reasons for this setup?
> >
> > A reason is I use my notebook at home and at work.
> > Having the "localhost" server solves the problem.
> > I simply use different port forwarding scripts at home and at work.
>
> Thanks for the explanation.
>
> Seb
>
> --
> Sébastien Vauban
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>

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Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Bastien]

Hi Greg,

Greg Newman <greg@20seven.org> writes:

> In light of this topic I've posted my process using mercurial and bitbucket
> from my Mac.  I've added an hourly bash script to my daemons to push to my repo
> every hour.  You can get all the details at http://www.20seven.org/journal/2009
> /09/backing-up-org-mode-files.html

I've added a link to this blog entry at the end of this page:

  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-vcs.php

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Greg Newman]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 597 bytes --]

Thanks Bastien.

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Bastien <bastienguerry@googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi Greg,
>
> Greg Newman <greg@20seven.org> writes:
>
> > In light of this topic I've posted my process using mercurial and
> bitbucket
> > from my Mac.  I've added an hourly bash script to my daemons to push to
> my repo
> > every hour.  You can get all the details at
> http://www.20seven.org/journal/2009
> > /09/backing-up-org-mode-files.html
>
> I've added a link to this blog entry at the end of this page:
>
>  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-vcs.php
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
>  Bastien
>

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Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Adam Spiers]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 05:27:40PM +0000, Robert Goldman wrote:
> FWIW, my feelings are the exact opposite of Matt's --- I find the added
> complexity of having multiple repositories to manage and the general added
> complexity of git quite unwelcome.
> 
> If you are trying to keep multiple machines in sync, I find that a centralized
> repository scheme is far simpler:  all you need to do is manage the relationship
> between your working copies and the repository, and that relationship is a very
> simple one.

This centralized model is also entirely possible with git.

> If you have a distributed revision control system and multiple different
> repositories, you must manage the relationship between the different
> repositories and the relationship between those repositories and your working
> copies.  Because of the peer-to-peer aspect, this is a complex quadratic mesh of
> relationships to manage, instead of the simple linear relationship you have with
> a centralized repository.

It's not quadratic - it's still linear because it's quite unnecessary
to have every repository interacting with every other.

> I would say that if (1) you generally are connected to the internet, with only
> minor intervals offline and (2) have access to a hosted svn repository (so you
> don't manage it yourself, and so that you can use the simple https protocol
> instead of fussing with ssh tunneling), then you are likely to find svn much
> simpler.  I am fortunate that both of these hold for me.

I disagree - I think using git with a centralized model provides the
best of both worlds: simplicity but also all the nice benefits of
decentralization such as offline commit and history access,
intelligent merging etc.  Lots of people do it this way, e.g.

http://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/2008/12/setting-up-centralied-git-repository.html

Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Rick Moynihan]

2009/11/4 Adam Spiers <orgmode@adamspiers.org>:
>
>> I would say that if (1) you generally are connected to the internet, with only
>> minor intervals offline and (2) have access to a hosted svn repository (so you
>> don't manage it yourself, and so that you can use the simple https protocol
>> instead of fussing with ssh tunneling), then you are likely to find svn much
>> simpler.  I am fortunate that both of these hold for me.
>
> I disagree - I think using git with a centralized model provides the
> best of both worlds: simplicity but also all the nice benefits of
> decentralization such as offline commit and history access,
> intelligent merging etc.  Lots of people do it this way, e.g.
>
> http://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/2008/12/setting-up-centralied-git-repository.html

+10 :-)

I use git and it's far easier and more robust than using subversion
(which I used prior to git for many years).

I have a private centralised git repo setup which I use to sync
changes in my org files between desktops at work, home and less
frequently my eeepc.  git's superior merging capabilities mean that
it's trivial to merge changes between all machines...  And when they
occaisionally get out of sync (as can always happen... even with a
cron job pushing) it's easily resolved.

I've been bitten by SVN many, MANY times in the past (merging is a
pain, the berkley-db dependency has been broken and poorly managed by
distros in the past, it interacts wierdly with mDNS on some platforms,
the repo sizes are huge, and if left unchecked svn servers will leave
lots of temporary files lying around, and having .svn directories
littered through your directory tree is a pain).  Also the svn repo
needs to be backed up seperately... where as with git you get
distributed backups for free.

By comparison git is hassle free and far more robust.  Though git is
my preference using git, mercurial or bzr would always be preferable
for me over SVN.

YMMV

R.

Re: Re: Subversion for backups?

[Eric S Fraga]

At Wed, 4 Nov 2009 14:01:23 +0000,
Rick Moynihan wrote:
> 
> 2009/11/4 Adam Spiers <orgmode@adamspiers.org>:
> >
> > I disagree - I think using git with a centralized model provides the
> > best of both worlds: simplicity but also all the nice benefits of
> > decentralization such as offline commit and history access,
> > intelligent merging etc.  Lots of people do it this way, e.g.
> >
> > http://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/2008/12/setting-up-centralied-git-repository.html
> 
> +10 :-)

[...]

> 
> By comparison git is hassle free and far more robust.  Though git is
> my preference using git, mercurial or bzr would always be preferable
> for me over SVN.

I agree as well.  I gave up on SVN after having been bitten one too
many times.  I will say, however, that although I use git [*] for
keeping my org-mode files in sync, for the central repository model, I
find that mercurial works better in that it's simpler to use.
However, mercurial and git are pretty much the same in this regard.

[*] Despite using mercurial for almost everything else, I use git and
    not mercurial for org-mode as mercurial is not available on my maemo
    Internet tablet....