[Info-vax] DCL enhancements

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/25/2021 12:05 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2021-01-25 13:40:25 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:
>> What about some easy-to-implement DCL enhancements?
>>
>> With PURGE/CONFIRM, there is Y, N, and A.  Why not R, for "rest", 
>> which would be A but only for the current file name and extension, 
>> then it would ask again for the next one?
> 
> Or set the default version limit to one on all volumes newly 
> initialized, maybe fix the inexplicable SYS$SCRATCH default of 
> SYS$LOGIN, and force the user to enable and accept the costs and messes 
> of multiple versions manually.
> 
> Then force the user to deal with the ensuing complexity brought by their 
> unwise choice to enable multiple versions, to script the inevitable 
> cleanup requirements, to store their temporary files in an actual 
> temporary area, and not dump all that into SYS$LOGIN:.
> 
> The forward-looking and overly-complex design—avoiding this mess—would 
> integrate replaced versions with backups and with a backup data recovery 
> framework, so that the superseded versions are immediately gone, but are 
> also archived and available to restore. This might work better with 
> newer file systems that are not infested with versions, but would need 
> file-change notification support and work in BACKUP or its replacement. 
> This'll need some change-pruning support, obviously. Maybe all copies 
> for an hour, then hourly copies for a day, etc. Pretty soon, you will 
> have built your own time machine for saving and restoring files.
> 
> But then designing a mostly-secure temporary storage area might require 
> a little more thought than initially realized, too. Same for backup and 
> restore integration. And compressing the delta for the 
> version-to-version changes is certainly fodder for thought.

I don't agree.

I don't see any point in VMS trying to become exactly like other OS.
If it does then there is no point in VMS.

There is a real demand for having backup of files. And it makes
sense to have a single solution across tools.

Are there better solutions than version numbers. Probably yes.

But versions number work. And people know them.

So why not keep them.

Arne