[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-09 15:59:57 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

>  do not see "backup" and "file versioning" as two features/tools that 
> replaces one of the other. They are complements.

They are the same, differing only in the associated temporality of the 
copies; in how long you might choose to retain the particular copies of 
files.  BACKUP backups too are routinely thinned, with daily backups 
being more frequent and of which some are then maintained as weekly and 
then as monthly and then as yearly, for instance.  Few keep daily 
backups for months or years, and those that do that also try to reduce 
that data by using incrementals and deltas and compression to reduce 
the volume of data.   Most folks treat file versions as little more 
than very transient backups, not keeping the intermediate versions 
around on a permanent basic.  Using file versions as intermediate 
copies is more complex because coordinating an intermediate version of 
changes across multiple files using file versioning is a disaster, too. 
  Better to have that versioning support in an IDE or in a text editor 
that's capable of editing and managing multiple files in parallel.   Or 
a checkpointing command, for those that are using command line tools 
and simpler editors or that might want a set of change loaded into 
revision control system.  But there's little difference in file 
versions and how a system manager keeps intermediate and more frequent 
snapshots around.

Most of the difference here is in the differences and details in the 
specific OpenVMS implementations of file versions and of BACKUP, rather 
than what the users might want and expect to happen if not for the 
knowledge of the current tooling, and of the effort that is involved 
with accessing and restoring backups on OpenVMS.

Sure, given file versions and the morass that is accessing files from 
backups on OpenVMS, versions are great.  But that's less about what can 
and should be, and more about contending with what is and what was.


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