Features
Important features include:
- Snapshots are available to all users. No administrator intervention is needed to access old data. (This is possible because Fossil enforces file permissions; users can only access data which they would be allowed to access anyway; thus a user cannot snoop on another's old files or look at old passwords or such.)
- Data in permanent snapshots (sometimes called archives) cannot be modified. Only the non-permanent snapshots can be removed.
To access a snapshot, one would connect to a running fossil instance (“mount” it) and change directory to the desired snapshot, e.g. /snapshot/yyyy/mmdd/hhmm (with yyyy, mm, dd, hh, mm meaning year, month, day, hour, minute). To access an archive (permanent snapshot), a directory of the form /archive/yyyy/mmdds (with yyyy, mm, dd, s meaning year, month, day, sequence number) would be used. Plan 9 allows modifying the namespace in advanced ways, like redirecting one path to another path (e.g. /bin/ls to /archive/2005/1012/bin/ls). This significantly eases working with old versions of files.
Read more about this topic: Fossil (file System)
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
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“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)