fischer-robert@cs.yale.edu (Robert Fischer) (12/20/90)
I'm Bob Fischer, the author of The Vault. I recently (October) got an
E-mail address, and am now available directly. My address is:
rfischer@cs.yale.edu
If you have something to say about The Vault and you want me to hear it,
please send it directly to me. I do not read the newsgroup, so posting
messages about bugs with The Vault, not working with Program X, etc.
is not likely to get any bug-fixes from me.
Here's the current status of The Vault, and what I plan to do in the future.
The current version, 2.01, is the only version ever released to the public.
Right now, I am using version 2.03, which lets you do multiple backups from
the same starting directory. I have only one hard-disk partition and
that way I can back up my system and user files from the root directory.
I never distributed 2.03 because its .VDF file format is different -- the
.VDF file needs an extra line to store an extra piece of data. I was
planning to rewrite the .VDF file format anyway into an extendable version,
and didn't want to confuse the matter with The Vault 2.03. If anyone
_really_ wants it, I can send The Vault 2.03.
But now, I'm working on The Vault 3.00. The Vault 2.03 is written mostly
in Pascal. I kept having great ideas of how to expand The Vault, but the
already-written routine was in C in a way that couldn't interface well
with Pascal. For example, I can't use anything using the malloc() call.
So I've converted The Vault to C, and the result is The Vault 3.00. It
still bombs in quite a few places, so I don't want to release it quite yet.
With Christmas vacation, I hope to work on it a lot, but I promise nothing...
Meanwhile, The Vault 2.01 works. I still use 2.03, because 3.00 doesn't
work well enough yet.
The Vault 3.00 has two differences with 2.01. It lets you do multiple
backups from one folder, and it formats disks twisted. I don't use Twister,
but instead my own program called FastFlop which speeds up on STANDARD
disks faster than Twister. The only problem is, it uses UNDOCUMENTED
locations. I was about to release a version which would work on a number
of versions of TOS, but then I found a bug and did a quick fix for
the version which I was using (I think TOS 1.4 in ROMs).
With The Vault 3.00, I plan to release the source code to people who
ask for it, under certain conditions. I don't have the conditions
here, so more on that later. In short, if you want to be an
Alpha/Beta tester for The Vault, I will send you the source code and
you can find bugs, fix them, make improvements, etc. The Vault 3.00
is written entirely in C and Assembler, and compiles for me with Mark
Williams C version 3 and MADMAC. The advantage of being a tester is,
when you find a bug, you can fix it yourself instead of trying to
explain it. You also get the newest releases of The Vault, before
I really believe they're bug-free. Of course, anything in The Vault
beta test version is likely to go wrong and mess up your backups.
Here are some future improvements I'd like to make to The Vault:
* Fully automated backups. The Vault would keep track of your backup
sets for you. Say you have three backup sets SET1, SET2, and SET3. The
Vault would know you most recently backed up to SET1, and when you say
Full Backup, it would tell you to use SET2. It can also keep track of
Incremental sets this way. I'm not quite sure yet what backup patterns
different people use, and therefore which ones to program in. So why
not, tell me about your backup procedure (if you have one).
* The Key sucks. I'd like to include it in The Vault, make restoring
much more automatic and user-friendly, add fancy wild-cards to it,
add dual mode. Maybe even a cache on the hard disk to improve its speed.
Anyone interested in writing a better Key, I'll send you the source code
to the current, and do whatever you want. Better yet, I'll tell you
how to restore split files, which is the only special thing about
The Key.
* I want help where you need it, which is not in the Help menu.
I'll change so that there's a little 'Help' button in every dialog
box. Pressing it brings up the apporpriate help box.
* I want to speed up incremental backups using a technique similar to that
used in DSCAN.
* I want to put icons and windows on The Vault's desktop so you can
browse through the files on your hard disk and look at them while in
The Vault.
* Every now and then, I toy with the idea of data compression and
writing non-TOS-format disks. I'm not sure if I really want to do
this, though... Or maybe I could find some really clever hack to
write while I'm reading the hard disk.
* It would be nice if The Vault worked with tape backup systems.
I don't own one, so I don't know how to write software for one.
* An option where you give The Vault a list of files to copy and it
copies them, something like a fancy cp command. It would be more useful
then as a general copy program.
So what do you think? What improvements would you like to see made?
I've written a bunch of programs which I never posted but am thinking
of posting. Which would you like to see? Here's a description of them:
* RD, a resizeable (but not reset-proof) RAMdisk. It's really
resizeable because you can resize it from anywhere -- in a
shellscript, etc. It takes its memory off the high end so as to not
fragment memory.
* FastFlop, described above. Maybe I'll release the current version,
and make it only install on TOS 1.4 in ROM.
* I reworked Moshe Braner's Flexcopy to use GEM.
I hope to hear from you, and I hope that you find The Vault useful.
--- Bob
--
| Robert Fischer |
| Arpanet: <rfischer@cs.yale.edu> |fischer-michael@cs.yale.edu (Michael Fischer) (12/21/90)
In article <27876@cs.yale.edu> fischer-robert@cs.yale.edu (Robert Fischer) writes: >I'm Bob Fischer, the author of The Vault. I recently (October) got an >E-mail address, and am now available directly. My address is: Correction: Bob Fischer's E-mail address is: fischer-robert@cs.yale.edu (Robert Fischer) His previous posting mistakenly listed his account name instead of his mail name. -- ================================================== | Michael Fischer <fischer-michael@cs.yale.edu> | ==================================================