[RFC] Drop workspace backup mechanism?

[kba]

trafficstars

The mechanism for backing up workspace data has next to no documentation and hasn't been in development for well over a year. Is anybody still using it?

As we'll add --overwrite in the next release, this would be a good moment to remove the workspace backup management code.

@bertsky @mikegerber @VolkerHartmann

[bertsky]

Practically I would not use backups for re-processing a pipeline anymore.

But perhaps we should nevertheless keep the mechanism – exactly because we will be using overwrite a lot. Also, it's already there and works and does not cost much (even for large workspaces) IIUC...

[kba]

does not cost much

It's not a question of performance, just maintainability and documentation. But I hear you, we'll keep it available for now and revisit the issue in a few weeks.

[VolkerHartmann]

It's fine from my side too.

[mikegerber]

I have not used it at all, what does it do what cp/git-annex etc. wouldn't do?