Is saving backups in Kate with time-stamp possible?

[chimak111]

Kate Version 18.12.1 in KDE Neon 5.14.5

For example, if I have /home/chimak/Desktop/text.txt and I edit and save it, I would like to have the backup file stored in ~/Public/Backups with a suffix like -20180122190631 (year, month, date, hour in 24h format, minutes, and seconds).

In Settings > Configure Kate > Open/Save>Advanced,

I have /home/chimak/Public/Backups/ in the Prefix box

But if I put -$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S) or even "-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)" in the Suffix box, both appear literally and are not converted to a time-stamp.

So after editing /home/chimak/Desktop/text.txt, ~/Public/Backups/ has test.txt-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S) or test.txt-"$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)" whereas what I want is test.txt-20180122190631.

The idea is to have time-stamped backups of files I edit with Kate in case I mess up and need to go back.

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If I use the default ~ as suffix, the incoming test.txt~ replaces the previous test.txt~.

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Also asked here: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comment..._backups_with/

[chimak111]

Geany has a "Save As" plugin, which if active, allows the user a choice of suffixes via the Plugin Preferences GUI:

[jlittle]

I do this with vim, it's a very good idea.

But googling kate scripting and plugins has found no hint of an events framework, or triggers, or the like. Of course, maybe I just don't know the right search term...

However, there's other approaches. A background script using inotifywait could do the job (minimally tested):

#!/bin/bash
dir_to_watch=whatever

inotifywait -r -m --exclude '[^~]$' -e create,close --format '%w%f'  $dir_to_watch |
 while read line
 do
     newname=${line%\~}$(printf "%(%F-%T)T.bk")
     mv $line $newname
 done

Another good idea is to check the file in to a private branch of your VCS of choice on every save; I keep meaning to set that up...

[chimak111]

@jlittle, Thanks for looking into this!

The inotify route would be, I'm guessing, an always-on feature whereas with Geany (or Kate, if there's a solution) would be as and when needed. Further, I would need to specify a whole lot of directories to watch because of dir_to_watch=whatever.

I've not ever wrapped my head around VCS

As for my other needs, like LibreOffice documents and spreadsheets, they're in my Dropbox folder and so I can get at older versions that way.

For now, it seems that Geany has what I need but let's hope that someone comes up with something for Kate.

[chimak111]

Well, it isn't available at this time: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comment...s_with/eerg3m5