Backup History for...

[carlpmiller]

I keep my development files on an external drive and I had to move my SlickEdit environment from one machine to another (Mac). I installed SlickEdit on the new machine and then copied the "backups" directory from the old Mac to the new one under "Application Support/SlickEdit/22.0/2/backups.

When I go to the "Backup History for..." menu, it states I need at least two versions for the file I'm editing. If I then use the backup history browser, I am able to find all the backups for that file. How can get the history to re-appear in the Backup History for... menu?

[Clark]

Does "Backup History For" work for you on the old machine?

Did you change your backup location?

"Application Support/SlickEdit/22.0.2/backups" is not the default location. The default location for v22 is "Application Support/SlickEdit/vsdelta". Notice that the vsdelta directory is no longer inside the version number directory. This was done so updating to a new version of SlickEdit doesn't require copying all the backup files to the new version.

[carlpmiller]

Backup history works fine on the old machine.

I don't recall explicitly changing my backup location, it seems every release I've upgraded has maintained it in the version directory/backups *except* when I upgraded to 22.0.2. In that case, it *left* the directory as .../21.0.1/backups! (I also ran beta on v22, but it was in a beta dir). So even while using 22.0.2 on the old machine, the backup history was still intact.

Browsing ...SlickEdit/vsdelta shows some files there, but much older, over a year old. The files under ...21.0.1/backups are dated as expected. Right up through the last file I know I edited.

So what I did was I copied everything in 21.0.1/backups on the old machine to the 22.0.2/backups directory on the new machine. I didn't realize it really wanted vsdelta, but my options are set to look in "backups" in 22.0.2 which is why I'm just expecting the history to just be there.

And like I mentioned, if I browse backup history, all the changes are in fact there (I've searched against specific files, like the last one I edited, and it knows about that change).

Would it help to move the files in backups to vsdelta instead?

[Dan]

When we updated the file format in 22.0 we moved the files from under the versioned directory to under the main config directory - unless you have a global directory set in your config.  We converted the files when we moved them.  If you had a global directory set we converted the files as you touched them.  Our default directory is vsdelta.  So if you had it in a backups directory and it was finding them, you may have had that directory set in your configuration before.

[Clark]

Sounds like you configured the backup directory sometime in the past.  If the vsdelta files are there (either .vsdelta or .vsdelta2), then it should have worked for you. The .vsdelta files get converted to .vsdelta2 files as needed.

[carlpmiller]

Here's an odd thing - now that I started actually saving files on the new machine, it appears that the backup history for the file(s) I save are now showing up. OK, that was the important thing.

Is there a way to force this new install to conform to the proper directory at this point? Without losing the existing history of course.

[Dan]

Go to Tools>Options>File Options>Backup and set "Backup directory path" to your backup path.