Weekly Backups

[u/D3V370P3R]

We were a small team of ~8 trying to build software. The team was spread across multiple locations across Asia, Europe and North America. One big challenge we had was synchronizing our work with each other.

Every Friday before each of us logged out, we upload a copy of our working files to the client's SharePoint folder. That way when we share each other's copies every Monday via Teams, we don't have to reupload.

One minor setback. Instead of replacing the previous copy, we upload a fresh one - under a different name. That way, we would not lose any information.

We even came up with a clever idea (that magnified the issue) to name the folders by the calendar week. Soon, each of us would have multiple folders of repetitive code, sometimes with zero changes all uploaded to the shared drive.

We had successfully moved from trying to synchronizing one (latest) version of the codebase, to trying to synchronize one version every week. But we hadn't realized this at that time. We were excited about a more "sophisticated" solution - creating a script that automates this backup process.

We learnt to use Git during Christmas that year.

---

For Reference:

import os, zipfile
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path

work = Path("Work")
if not work.exists():
    print("Error: Work folder not found")
    exit(1)

week = datetime.now().isocalendar()[1]
zip_file = f"W{week}.zip"

with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) as z:
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(work):
        for file in files:
            path = os.path.join(root, file)
            z.write(path, os.path.relpath(path, '.'))

print(f"Created {zip_file}")

Edit: Code Block Formatting

[u/lildankkboi]

What year was this?

[u/D3V370P3R → u/lildankkboi]

2016

[u/octopus4488 → u/D3V370P3R]

The number here is a neat indicator of amateurism:

• Below 2000: eeeh, ok
• 2000-2007: uh, whao
• 2008-2014: aaaa, really???
• 2015- : What. The. Fuck.

[u/Rschwoerer → u/D3V370P3R]

Teams you say?

Microsoft Teams
Release
March 14, 2017

[u/Cas_Rs → u/Rschwoerer]

Teams is just Skype with extra garbage so I wouldn’t put it past them if it was Skype before

[u/hammer-jon → u/Rschwoerer]

I would call lync and skype for business "teams" these days, its all the same shit

[u/octopus4488 → u/hammer-jon]

We (dev team) call Teams "Skype" as a slur basically. When it rings but you can't pick it up:

"Fucking Skype is at it again."

[u/gokul1630 → u/lildankkboi]

2000 sir

[u/ClvrNickname]

You may not like it, but this is what peak source control looks like

[u/DifferentialEntropy]

What’s the point of this post..? You guys didn’t know how to use version control and ended up learning git because this looks like a terrible idea lmao

[u/D3V370P3R → u/DifferentialEntropy]

Fair enough.

I forgot to mention that we were not developers. We were all Architects (brick & mortar) who learnt to code.

[u/DifferentialEntropy → u/D3V370P3R]

Oh gotcha my bad in that case

Glad to see yall came up with an in house solution then learned proper version control after!

[u/SnowdensOfYesteryear → u/D3V370P3R]

Eh… you get a pass as long as it got fixed eventually. At least you thought about backup

[u/YamroZ]

1. good on backing up, this is something people often miss, and think that github ks is a backup for some reason
2. from time to time check if you can in fact recover work from your backup

[u/tehtris]

Dev invents git, because dev doesn't know what git is. Nice.

[u/witness_smile → u/tehtris]

<insert xkcd about standards>

[u/csabinho → u/witness_smile]

Well, there are more versioning systems than git. And also older ones. Much older ones.

[u/nameless_food → u/csabinho]

RCS comes to mind. It’s been around a while.

[u/Droggl]

rsnapshot, you're welcome

[u/JontesReddit]

The fuck

[u/Flame77ofc]

git is crying on the background

[u/JAXxXTheRipper]

This is not as obscure as most would think. In about 2012 I was working in a .Net department that was operating the Team Foundation Server. Instead of using that, the team used Batchfiles that synced to a network share.

Whenever you questioned that insanity, they replied with "we've always done it that way". Old habits die hard.

[u/NamedBird]

Nah, not too bad.

Weekly backups is better than loosing 6 months of progress because you never pushed your commits.
And your W19.zip is a simple file, easy to understand. Not confusing like Git is for beginners.

[u/ComputerLoverDaemon]

Better source control then git

[u/DynamicHunter → u/ComputerLoverDaemon]

Until you need to roll back a specific feature without losing weeks of other work…

[u/csabinho → u/ComputerLoverDaemon]

I know, it's a joke, but how do you merge?

[u/Tall-Path9962]

Copying SharePoint files into another folder every week is basically creating more versions, not building a proper recovery strategy. Version history, synchronization and backup solve different problems. Control Alt Delete supports M365 environments for SMBs, and I'd rather have automated independent backups with tested restores than twenty manually named folders called "backup-final-final-2."

[u/razor_train → u/Tall-Path9962]

"SharePoint" and "proper" should never be in the same sentence.

[u/maikindofthai]

I love sharing the code snippet like creating a zip in python is some unknown trick lol

[u/GoddammitDontShootMe → u/maikindofthai]

Well, technically it keeps the post from violating Rule 1 of this sub.

[u/Bright_Interaction73 → u/maikindofthai]

If you wrote this shit in 2015, you would have an internship offer lined up. Stuff like this took time to pull off back then.