Re: version 2.2 --remove-older-than behavior changed

[Patrik Dufresne]

The only suggestion I have is to adjust the command line interface to
change the behavior of the return code.

Something like:
rdiff-backup --remove-older-than 30d --ignore-warning ?

Or the other way around:
rdiff-backup --remove-older-than 30d --error-if-nothing-is-removed ?

Other command line tools are also tweaking the exit code behaviour based on
the command line flag. e.g. curl has "--fail" flag

As a reference, here is the initial request to change the exit code
behaviour: https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup/issues/616
That might explain a bit the difference in usecases.


On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 9:01 AM Derek Atkins <derek@ihtfp.com> wrote:

> Eric,
>
> On Fri, February 17, 2023 6:52 am, Eric Zolf wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 17/02/2023 09:00, Reio Remma wrote:
> >> Getting complicated. I agree, that "No increment is older than 20D"
> >> shouldn't be a warning, it's quite normal behaviour.
> >
> > Here we can agree to disagree, because it depends on the context, but
> > I'd ask why did you start this command if you knew that nothing would
> > happen and you are not surprised by the result?
>
> I have a script that backs up a bunch of servers and then after the backup
> re-runs rdiff-backup to remove increments older than 1y.  Sometimes there
> are none (for example, if there was a power outage a year before causing
> the backups to fail then).  To my mind, this case is NOT AN ERROR.
>
> Did I know nothing would happen?  No.
> Am I surprised by the result?  No.
> Do I expect an error code?  No.
> Do I want to have to rewrite my script?  Definitely Not!
>
> This gets even more complicated because my script is set up to run
> multiple versions of rdiff-backup based on the version on the target
> machine!  Right now I have 1.2.8 and 2.0 both running simultaneously on
> the backup server.  Right now I can configure the rdiff-backup version in
> the per-target config, but the script that runs the command is common.  If
> I have to change the script to handle errors differently, that would
> very-much complicate my backup system.
>
> > KR, Eric
>
> -derek
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek@ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
>
>

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