On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 07:53:09PM -0400, Default User wrote:
On 2025-03-14 [FR], Russell Harris wrote:
I use git. I keep terminal open running a ssh connection open to the
backup system. Whenever I wish to save the state of the system, I
switch to the terminal and execute git commit. To check the previous
state of a file, Emacs provides git-timemachine.
Simple and miminal hassle.
Would you mind sharing with us some details about how you do this (and
how you decided to do so), or at least give some pointers to more
information about this from other sources?
= I write for a living, but with age and arthritis, a simple
typographic error can be disastrous, particularly with Emacs. Also, I
may rewrite a paragraph or several pages, and then decide that the
former version was better. Accordingly, I vary the backup frequency
partly upon finger dexterity (which can vary from day to day) and
partly upon the complexity of the material on which I am working.
When proofreading, I may backup with each change, no matter how minor.
= I back up only the repository of the articles I write, together with
supporting documents such as LaTeX document class files and scripts.
Everything I wish to backup, I keep in a single directory, with the
associated ".git" file. Of course, you can have multiple git
repositories on a single drive.
= With git, I can do a hundred backups in a morning or afternoon
session without worry about consumption of disk space. I am not
concerned with an orderly and uncluttered commit record; my concern is
the ability to recover.
= The time required for each backup is negligible:
(1) switch to a virtual terminal
(2) type: git commit -a -m journal #050
(3) switch back to Emacs
= I have in the LAN a machine which I keep running almost constantly.
The machine runs getmail to pull messages from the mail servers of one
or more ISPs. It seemed logical to me to utilize this machine as a
git repository, and also as an approx server for the LAN. I suppose I
ought also to have it generate web pages from the data stream of my
backyard weather station and upload them to a website.
= At the beginning of a session, I use the bash control-r command to
pull up commonly-used git commands:
git status
git add -A
git commit -a -m document #13
= For recovery, in Emacs I type:
alt-x git-timemachine
which allows me to use "p" and "n" (previous and next) to scroll
through saved states.
= If I need to work outside of the office, I pull out the laptop and
clone the repository:
git clone 192.168.1.40:/git.repository.git /home/rlh/git.clone-2025.03.15
RLH
