Re: Image versus package savers?

Griff,

As far as version control for applications within in your image, would
you say that you prefer backing up your whole image frequently and
exporting then backing up your packages frequently, or vice versa?

I /never/ back up an image -- to much risk of inconsistency with backed-up
packages. (Equally, I suppose, one could refuse to back up packages if one
were backing up the image regularly). I rebuild my working image from packages
only when I am forced to -- perhaps once or twice a year -- so I save packages
out to file /vastly/ more frequently than I load from file.

FWIW. I use the packages files as the ultimate repository of code. They get
backed up carefully (when I remember). I don't use Subversion (or anything
else) for versioning those files, but I do use STS to provide a history (and
partial additional backup) of the packages' developing states. The STS
repository itself is also GCed and backed-up (again, when I remember).

I save packages out frequently (minutes rather than hours or days). I version
packages in STS whenever the code reaches some sort of plateaux (which includes
immediately after small bugfixes). I don't allow any of the following
situations to occur except in very rare (and /very/ conscious) circumstances:
- The package on disk is more recent than the
package embedded in the latest saved image state.
- The package on disk is more recent than the
package in the current running image.
- STS holds a version of a package which is more recent
than the current .PAC file for that package.

Works well for me (with some tweaking to the tools to maintain my invariants
automatically). YMMV.

The only downside I see (beyond the necessity to tweak/replace some of the
tools) is that I don't have a versioned history of external resources such as
icon files and documentation. As it happens I don't care much about their
history.

-- chris



.