Re: auto-backing up your .emacs

[Thierry Banel <tbanelwebmin@free.fr>]

Sharon Kimble <boudiccas <at> talktalk.net> writes:

> 
> Can somebody help me please, I want to put this line into my .emacs -
> 'cp ~/.emacs ~/.emacs.d/.emacs-$(date +%Y%m%d-%R)' but it works as part
> of a bash script, but I don’t know elisp to get it working in my .emacs.
> What it does is save a dated and timed copy of your .emacs in your
> ~/.emacs.d so that when you're trying things out and learning how to
> use .emacs you'll always have a backup copy. A case in point, last
> night I had org2blog working, today, after fiddling its stopped
> working, but if I'd had this operational I could just revert to a known
> and working .emacs. So, can you help please?
> 
> Thanks
> Sharon.

Hi Sharon

Emacs already have a builtin file version control.
If you use Emacs itself to edit your .emacs,
it will most likely create a .emacs~, which is a backup.
This is controlled by the variable make-backup-files.
Add this line to your .emacs:
  (setq make-backup-files t)

You may want to have several backup files.
They will be numbered with names like .emacs.~7~
Then add this line to your .emacs:
  (setq version-control t)

Of course this works for all files visited by Emacs, not only .emacs.

Look at the documentation:
  within Emacs, type C-h i
  then navigate to
    Emacs > Files > Saving > Backup 

Have fun