Rich Web - maluke.com

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1255

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:46:33 GMT

Sorry for taking a bit longer with this release. The reason for that was that I spent some time working on new code. The process of building an executable was completely overhauled and while it brings no immediately obvious changes for the user it's an important step for some of the things we have planned and to be announced at their own time.

(Also, another beta extension for S3 Webmaster was issued. I expect that it will get some care rather soon and get an actually updated release at last.)

Almost immediately after rev.1221 a rev.1224 was issued with a fix to Reaction bug in lock management. I apologize for having that one in the first place, but I also have to note that the bug was of a kind that would go unnoticed if Reaction wasn't written with thought given to such things -- it did a very good job detecting that something was wrong.
The issue with Windows 7 scheduling that appeared in the last revision was resolved. We always try to test the app in a couple of different environments before releasing a new version, but as far as permissions on task scheduling operations go, systems seem to vary wildly. So if you have any messages pop up when configuring the scheduling of the backup job, let us know so we could look into it. Note however that this does not apply to the running on schedule part -- that functionality is solid. It's the configuration part that proved to be quirky.
When the client computer time is skewed, Amazon denies access for security reasons (to fight against so called "replay attacks"). This condition was not properly reported in a few recent revisions, but this is fixed now. If your computer clock or timezone settings are way off you will get a message telling you what time Amazon expects the client machine to have.
The app is linked against newest Microsoft CRT libraries now.
I will not detail the multiple changes to the application building process and internal changes, as this time that is something that is quite hard to explain without getting into details on internal architecture. So I'll just mention that there were quite a few more.

Now we are back to migrating the codebase and releasing new revisions every couple of days. We were made aware of a couple temporary issues caused by mismatch in some parts of the app between the old and the new codebase, but those will be resolved shortly.

Still, please do report whenever you see any odd behavior.

Also, let me mention again that while S3 Backup is in beta you can order a license at discount.

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1221

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:35:08 GMT

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1221

Fixed Unicode handling in backup job filesystem tree. Our filesystem abstraction code is designed to be 100% Unicode, but there was one specific place where the app was interacting with Windows API for disk drives enumeration which is non-Unicode and that caused a glitch. Now fixed.
Fixed missing import in advanced backup rule configuration.
Better handles task scheduling on Vista with UAC enabled. This change however was reported to cause a different problem with task scheduling on Windows 7. We were able to reproduce it and it's on top of our list of things to fix for the next revision.
There were further changes to the code that used to be based on Trellis and which caused problems when ported to Reaction. This entire part of codebase is marked for replacement with a new component, but unfortunately caused errors for some users while it's still there. What happens is that during a backup job it would pop up a debug report and print a traceback saying "Rollback not implemented". If you still see this error, please let us know.
Fixed a bug causing non-informative messages on some errors reported by Amazon S3 ("NameError: Message"). Now in these cases the message from S3 itself will be shown instead.
There was more work on building the distributions and while there's yet more to be done there are some noticeable differences:
- One is that the app only needs a couple files in its directory once installed (to see the difference, you'll need to uninstall the previous version first). This is great because it makes much tidier portable installations. There's more planned on this front, but it depends on some other changes that haven't been applied yet.
- Another change, while small, is that the installer shrunk from about 7Mb it was before to 6.3Mb. It could have been brought down to about 5Mb if not for some Microsoft DLLs we have to bundle because they are not present on all systems. This is low priority, but I suppose sometime after the 1.0 release we'll be able to make the installer download those only if they are needed and make the installer even smaller.

If you notice any problems, please let us know and we'll get back to you with a fix ASAP.

And if you like S3 Backup, please consider supporting its development and order a license at discount during the beta.

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1204

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:11:43 GMT

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1204

This revision adds a new filesystem abstraction layer, now there's no limit on path length and the app will backup folders and files even with super-long paths.
Distro building code got reworked, this will help automating new releases so that updates and bugfixes can be made available immediately. We also have have a web-service / UI for version checking ready but will enable it in a later release.
A bug in Reaction was fixed. It manifested itself by sometimes causing hangups while running backup jobs (it only affected a couple latest releases).

If you notice any problems, please let us know and we'll get back to you with a fix ASAP.

Also, consider supporting S3 Backup development by ordering a license. During the beta, the licenses are are sold at discount.

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1187

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:56:00 GMT

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1187

This is a transitional release and should not have any noticeable differences, but there are some internal changes:

new eventloop
better, more efficient backup job elapsed time tracking
a few changes to how UI is updated during the backup

If you notice any problems with this release, please let us know.

Don't forget that now you can support S3 Backup development by ordering a license. Discounts will not last for too long, so please consider buying today.

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1184

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:37:53 GMT

S3 Backup beta 15 rev.1184

The latest beta 14 revisions started to use Trellis and while that part is small it was now ported to Reaction to be compatible with the GUI code in the new codebase.
Also, context management (settings and other things like supporting concurrent backup jobs, or changing configuration while a job is running without breaking it) was previously implemented with PyProtocols. That library is deprecated now, so it was replaced with a Contextual-fork-based stub. But most of the affected code will soon be replaced with a newer implementation anyway, so this is as a transitional measure.

Don't forget that now you can support S3 Backup development by ordering a license, you can get a good discount if you order now instead of postponing until the final release.

If you notice any problems, please let us know -- we normally issue a fix within hours after receiving a report.