Re: Questions about a script for regular backups

[replying via Gmane]

Andreas Stieger:

>The dump format is not the best option for backups. The
>restore time is much too slow as you need to recover from a
>serialized format. In many hand-baked scripts the dump
>method misses point-in-time recovery capabilities, ->

Why should I need those if SVN repositories store the
complete history?

>-> and few people implement backup usability checks by
>loading the dump.

Is not a dump guarranteed to be usable if `svn dump'
succeeded? If not, how do I load that dump without
intefering with the current work?

>If you have content-aware file based backup software
>available use that in the on-disk repository format.

The Unison file synchroniser, to work efficeintly on
Windows, has an option to use file size and modification
date to detect changes. Would that work with SVN?

Do you suggest that I backup the contents of

  csvn\data\repositories

>Just make sure you take a consistent snapshot, which can be
>achieved by briefly locking it (svnadmin lock) or operating
>on a consistent copy (svnadmin hotcopy).

Is a hot-copy portable between SVN versions? How safe is it
to rely on a hot copy instead of a dump?

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