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Number   :  4863
Date     :  2003-06-21
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Re: Enhancement request: multiple output files
Size(KB) :  3


J. Merrill wrote:

>I agree with the advice in Tech Bulletin 26 that you don't want the names 
>of copied files cluttering the main log file. I also don't want the names 
>of skipped files to be in there, but I'd like to retain the list of 
>skipped files. If deleting, I'd like the names of the deleted files.
>
>I'd like to suggest that the various /o? options (where ? is one 
>of DEFIPSX) accept optional filespecs. So then 
>e.g. /oD2:deleted.log /oF2:copied.log /oS2:skipped.log
>would let me keep those long lists out of the /oA output file.
>
>It'd be nice if I could use the same filename for each of those if I 
>wanted to.
>
>I suppose I could arrange for multiple XXCOPY /L runs, collecting those 
>separate lists, and finally do a run without /L that has /oD0 /oF0 
>/oS0. That's my alternative, I guess; ick.
>
>Is this a request that might be (a) easy enough; (b) useful enough; (c) 
>desired enough by others; to actually happen? Thanks.

Thank you for your suggestion.

My answers:

(a) easy to implement but quite messy. We would probably
have to spend more time in documentation than the
actual coding.

(b) I'm sure it's very useful for you. But, I'm not
sure if other users will put these feature on top
of their wish list.

(c) I'm not sure.

I agree that the list of deleted files should be available.
At one point we had it (but now, after some internal changes
it was temporarily out of order).

Frankly, these are the type of features that will be put at
the bottom of our "to-do" list. Usually, we always find
something more urgent and important things to work before
the features you mentioned will ever be the next item to
work and the only way these kind of features becomes a
reality is when either your company or other company who
happens to need them desperately will give us a very large
order which is contingent upon implementing the feature.

In short, we are not very enthusiastic. Because we have
more urgent work in front of us. For example,
we are working hard on the XP-Clone project which allows
XXCOPY users to have a bootable backup on the second disk.
That one has a very high priority. Secondly, we need to
make the security-info transfer feature more bullet-proof.
Third, XXCOPY cannot handle Unicode based filenames well.
This is also very important.

In this particular case, we could write a few perl scripts
to re-process the log output within several hours
to satisfy your needs. Then, it is more like a
custom-programing job for a specific customer.

I guess to incorporate such variations into XXCOPY itself
needs a lot more people who agree with you. And, in my
estimation, only a few people probably come forward with
the same level of intensity as you.

In my opinion, the kind of customization features you are
referring to typically belong to very large, cumbersome
tools such as Cheyenne, Veritas, Legato, etc. (but look
at their price tag). We even believe that having lots of
distracting features in those monstrous software packages
are not always good thing to a product.

I feel really bad to be "negative" to a proposal that
an XXCOPY user sends us. I often find myself writing
a very lengthy reply when my reaction is not favorable.
The lengthy (mostly negative) analysis of the proposed
features is not to kick around a bad idea to the death,
but rather, I feel obligated to give my full explanation
of why I don't share the same enthusiasm as the user.

Kan Yabumoto



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