versioning file system

[Lowell Gilbert]

David Bear <David.Bear at asu.edu> writes:

> years ago I used a VAX VMS system that automatically saved file
> versions whenever a file name was clobbered.  

Among the many clever features of VMS.

> I've seen wrapper scripts for vi to accomplish the same but it would
> be nice if someone had actually implemented something at the file
> system level to do this.  Anyone know of anything like that for
> FreeBSD?

No.  Full support of this feature would involve a lot more than just
the filesystem, since applications that look at directories directly
have to know about about the backup versions in order to use them.

Individual applications can do a "poor man's" version of this (e.g.,
the Gnu 'ls' support for emacs-style backup filenames), but again it's
limited by (or to) the applications that know about it.