rollback capability for linux config files and scripts

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2008-03-11 16:35, Satish Balay <balay at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Marcin Kasperski wrote:
>>>> Frequently, when I modify my scripts or config files on my Linux box I'm
>>>> afraid I'll break something and hence make a manual backup copy. This only
>>>> gets me a manual, rudimentary rollback capability. I was looking into using
>>>> cvs / mercury / subversion to help me get this a little more efficient and
>>>> safer.
>>>> (...)
>>>
>>> If its just keeping track of changes to a few files spread out [in
>>> different directories], I would just use RCS. Its primary purpose was
>>> to track individual files changes anyway..
>> 
>> RCS does not handle file renames, removals etc, not to mention symlinks.
> 
> rename:
> 
> mv foo bar; mv RCS/foo,v RCS/bar,v
> 
> delete:
> 
> rm foo; [optionally rm RCS/foo,v]

Oops, you just lost the history of the `rename' and `delete'
operation itself (unrecoverably too, since there is no way to
find out anything about the rename/delete in a month or so).

While RCS is a neat tool for handling a small set of files,
and it does have some bits of smarts about permissions, Marcin
is also right about renames and deletes :)