make a back up of overwiritten file or folder

[QiangF]

Hello everyone,
When the force option is true, dotbot removes the original file. That could be risky. Will it be better if the original file or folder is renamed with a version suffix 1, 2, like emacs did for its backup files?
Thank you!

[petersandor]

I think this was requested before, see #12

[anishathalye]

I don't think there's any need to change the existing behavior for force. After all, it is called "force" 😛.

What would you think about having a separate backup: true option for this kind of behavior.

I didn't really like it back in #12, but I think enough people have been asking for this that we can add it.

[QiangF]

The use cases are:
1 when you want to try another set of dotfiles (tens of files) on an old computer which are not manged by dot bot, and you don't have enough time to go through each of them, have a backup makes you worry free.
2 when you dist-upgrade to a new version of the os, some configuration may change, but most of them may still work, you can try the old dotfiles and let the problem to appear by themselves, only if you have a backup.

[anishathalye]

Ok, let's make this happen. I like having a backup: true option, which specifies that files should be backed up and then removed and relinked.

Does anyone want to submit a PR for this?

[ibeex]

hi I added backup option it is backup: dir_name dir_name is name off sub directory inside dotfile dir in that directory backup off existing files is created. Also I added one more option. Adding non existing entries in config file, they will be added and recreated with link. code is here https://github.com/ibeex/dotbot

[ashkitten]

I don't think the backup location should have to be inside the dotfiles directory - it has nothing to do with your current dotfiles and probably shouldn't be synced to git

[ibeex]

@ashyon For most scenarios you are probably right. I was using principle better safe then sorry. I don't think there is to much overhead if backup dir is in dotfiles directory. If you don't need it in git, it can always go in .gitignore.

[anishathalye]

Closing due to age / inactivity. I've gone back and forth on the necessity of this feature, but I feel like if more people needed it, there would have been more activity on the relevant GitHub issues. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[anishathalye]

Oops I see that there is an open PR that implements this functionality (indicating more recent interest): #349