TimeMachine: warnings regarding Xojo

General
1

Hello Community,

I wonder if there are precautions that needs to be applied when developing with Xojo ? To give an example of what I think about is when one develops with FileMaker, TimeMachine should never backup live files (open database files) because it can corrupt those - I already had an issue with that. What we do is backup the backups made by the FileMaker server. This way all is fine.

So back to Xojo, are there any donts that one should take care of, for example projects already open by Xojo ? Maybe other files like SQLite ?

Thanks

2

I’ve been running TimeMachine on my Xojo project folders for over a decade, never had any issues at all.

I think it’s still wise to keep your xojo files out of folders that are under file synchronization control (Box, iCloud, Adobe Sync…)

1 Like
3

your Xojo files are not open when the project is loaded.
Time Machine can do backups.

4

And that’s also why you can eject/unmount a disk where a project is open in Xojo (then you can’t save the file directly). I’d prefer the file to be kept open, like any other app.

5

Then the project file is open only when saving. Then what would happen if TimeMachine backups the file at the same moment Xojo save the project ? That may happen.

6

The IDE writes to files atomically, that is, to a temp file first and then replaces the old one. With that going on, even a file that’s in the middle of being backed-up shouldn’t cause issues.

2 Likes
7

Also, with FSEvents, I guess TimeMachine would backup again after it notices the file has changed.

8

If you are using Big Sur or later, Time Machine can back up to an APFS drive, and I believe APFS uses snapshots to avoid any issues with live data.

Note: you have to reformat your Time Machine drive to APFS to get this feature; there is no automatic conversion.

See Getting started with Time Machine to APFS in Big Sur – The Eclectic Light Company

I did it, and I can say it works well - it feels like TIme Machine to APFS on Big Sur is quite a bit faster than before.

9

The article fails to mention what is wrong with keeping HFS+, no?
I still think HSF+ has made proofs of reliability; APFS is just “too young”.

10

Not really - it’s been used on iOS and macOS since 2017. That’s 4+ years and billions of devices.

11

Right, I should have said “younger”; still don’t know how reliable volumes with that format will be in, say, 10 years (corrupted or unreadable, perhaps?).

12

I’ve found my Time Machine backups to also be significantly faster since switching to APFS.

2 Likes