On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:33 PM, Richard Pieri <[email protected]> wrote: > Snapshots aren't at all close to versioning. A versioning file system keeps > (or can keep; one can usually configure how many versions to keep) every > version of a file saved. File system snapshots get the file system state > when the snapshots are made. > > For example: create a ZFS snapshot. Create a file. Edit it and save it. > Repeat nine more times. Create another snapshot. How many versions of the > file do you have? You would have just one on ZFS. You would have all > eleven on a versioning file system.
Talking about versioning filesystems, why haven't they been popular on Unix/Linux? I know RSX-11 and VMS implemented versioning filesystems which were used quite extensively in development environments. I am aware of VFS implementations for Linux such as ext3cow and NILFS but haven't actually seen them used anywhere. I have always wondered why we don't see more uses of this idea. I know ClearCase implements a virtual filesystem to create a "view" of the versioned object, but I don't believe the versioning is handled natively in the filesystem -- the versioning I think is handled by a separate database. -Shankar _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
