[Discuss] Versioning File Systems

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On 05/05/2012 03:13 PM, MBR wrote:
> On 5/4/2012 7:13 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> Versioning isn't revision control. Revision control isn't versioning.
>> There is some overlap in what they do but they aren't the same thing.
>> --Rich P. 
> That's becoming clear.  I'm trying to understand the difference.  It
> seems like versioning is having the operating system do for all files
> what emacs does for text files.  Is it that versioning automatically
> provides me with some number of backup copies of the file that I can go
> back to in case I screw something up, as long as I don't mistakenly
> delete the whole file.  And that's contrasted with revision control
> which is not automatic.  It requires a conscious decision to save a
> version, but can track file deletion and renaming, and knows about sets
> of file revisions that produce a working system.  Do I have that right?

In the context of software development, it is much more important to
have a snapshot of ALL FILES at any point in time than one particular
file, since they depend on each other so heavily.  Versioning
filesystems won't do that.