VB Restore

Disclaimer.

What is VB Restore?

How to...

restore a project.

specify the backup.

specify the destination directory.

use command-line switches.

Other things of possible importance.


Disclaimer

I DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, IMPLIED OR NOT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSE WITH RESPECT TO THE PROGRAM OR THE HELP FILE (THIS FILE).

IN NO EVENT SHALL I BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGE WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES OR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF FILES OR ANY INFORMATION, OR OTHER LOSS, WHATEVER THAT MAY BE) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS PROGRAM, EVEN IF I HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.


How to specify the backup

How to specify the destination directory.	How to restore a project.

When you specify the backup that you wish to restore, you are shown the name of the backup, it's date and the directory it is located in. Thus you can determine the order in which the backups were made. Follow these steps:

1.	Click Project-button on the main window. A dialog that shows a drive and directory list box and a list box at the bottom appears.

2.	Select the drive that contains the backups. If you insert a wrong diskette, click Clear and re-read -button.

3.	Use the directory list box to find all backups of the project you wish to restore. Double-clicking a directory adds to the list box  all backups in that directory and it's first-level subdirectories (shown in the directory list box). This allows you to easily see all backups of certain project, if you use multiple generation backups. If the list box shows too many irrelevant backups, you can clear it by clicking the Clear and re-read -button.

4.	Select the backup you want to restore and then click OK or Cancel to leave the backup unspecified or at it's previous setting.


How to specify the destination directory

How to specify the backup name.	How to restore a project.

To specify the destination directory, follow these steps:

1.	Click Destination-button on the main window.

2.	Select the drive you want to restore the project into. Clicking Re-read-button will re-read the drive.

3.	Select the directory you wish to restore the project into by double-clicking it. In practice, this is the directory where the project's MAK-file is copied into. This affects the location to which files specified with relative paths in the MAK-file are copied to.

4.	Click OK to accept or Cancel to leave the destination directory as it is.


How to restore a project

How to specify destination directory.	How to specify backup name.

To restore the project, follow these steps:

1.	Specify the destination directory and project backup name.

2.	Click Restore-button on the main window.

3.	Select the files you want to restore from the list box. The following information is shown:

Newer: the file in the destination is newer than the one in the backup.

Nonexisting: the file does not exist in the destination. These are selected automatically.

Changed: the file in the destination has changed after it has been backed up the last time.

Same: the file in destination is the same as the file in backup.

MAK-file: this is the MAK-file of the project. It is selected automatically.

4.	If you want to restore a project to system that already has the project in question and you don't want these two instances to overlap, you can copy the files that are specified by absolute paths in the MAK-file into the same directory as the MAK-file by checking the Copy files specified by absolute path to destination directory -check box. Thus a file that otherwise would be copied to e.g. c:\windows\vb\myproj (the line in the MAK-file is: C:\WINDOWS\VB\MYPROJ\filename.ext) will be copied to the destination directory.

5.	By checking the Save changes in the MAK-file -check box you can ensure that the MAK-file is ready for use after the restoring process is over. Only the changes caused by impossible paths (e.g. when destination is C:\MYPROJ and the file that is restored is specified with  a line ..\..\..\SUB\DIR\filename.ext in the MAK-file, the directory cannot be made) or by checking the check box described earlier are saved. Thus leaving a nonexistent file unrestored won't result in excluding it from the project.

6.	Click Restore-button to restore the project.


How to use command-line switches

You can use command-line switches to set certain parameters that you know will be unchanged for every time or for many times of execution of VB Restore. These include the project name, destination directory and the location of the project backups. Thus you can set an instance for VB Restore for every project that has the project name and destination and source directories already specified. Or if you have all of your projects in the same directory, you can just specify the destination and leave the source and project name unspecified.

Note: All switches are case-insensitive and their order is immaterial. If same switch appears several times, only the last one is taken into account.

•	To specify the source directory, use the switch /SourceDir=drive:\path[\]. This switch can be abbreviated as /SD=drive:\path[\]. The path must be absolute, otherwise it is ignored. The backslash at the end is optional and may in all cases be omitted. (E.g. /sd=b: is a valid setting.) The drive must be ready and the correct disk in when VB Restore is executed. If drive is not ready or the directory does not exist in the disk that is in, the switch is omitted. Otherwise the relevant dialog is shown.

•	To specify the destination directory, use the switch /DestDir=drive:\path[\], abbreviated as /DD=drive:\path[\]. Same rules apply to the path and drive as in previous case.

•	To specify the project name, use the switch /ProjectName=FILENAME.MAK, abbreviated as /PN=FILENAME.MAK. The extension may not be left out. Only the backups, the MAK-file of which is FILENAME.MAK, are shown when specifying the backup that you want to restore. This switch has effect only if /SourceDir -switch is used. The filename setting is in effect until you click Project-button on the main window.


What is VB Restore
What is VB Restore?

VB Restore is copyrighted 1993 by Ismo Kärkkäinen. All rights reserved.

VB Restore is a program intended to ease restoring projects backed up with VB Backup. It is of great use if the files of your projects are located in several directories, as restoring the files manually is slow and depending on the number of directories included, even difficult. You can use command-line switches to set some often used settings or you can give all information from within the program.  See other topics for details.

VB Restore is freeware. It means that you can distribute VB Restore freely provided that no other fees than for covering distribution costs are charged and that these two files (VBRESTOR.EXE and VBRESTOR.HLP) are kept together.

If you find any bugs that may still be hanging around in spite of testing, please drop me an email at iak@cc.joensuu.fi and tell which message you got, when you got it and other relevant information, like the MAK-file of the project you tried to restore, the directory listing of the directory the backup is located in and possibly the directory you tried to restore the project into (i.e. destination directory).


Things of possible importance

Backups made with older versions of VB Backup.

VB Restore is designed to work with the version of Stephen Kearney's VB Backup distributed with VB Restore. The differences between newer and older versions of VB Backup are that newer version turns archive attribute off for those files it backs up and it also sets the date and time of the backed up MAK-file to the date and time when the backup was made. This enables VB Restore to show the times when the backup was made when selecting the backup and it also allows VB Restore to tell if file has been changed after the last backup.

Thus the backups made with older version can be restored, but the time shown is not correct.

MAK-files.

If future versions of VB allow comments in MAK-file and the file format remains essentially the same as in VB 2.0 and VB 3.0, keep in mind that VB Restore considers a line of the MAK-file a filename if it appears before ProjWinSize -line. A comment line before the filename in the MAK-file can confuse VB Restore if it contains the filename at the end of the line. The first occurrence of the filename at the end of the line line is considered as the filename with path. VB Restore does not take into account any lines containing the same filename after the first occurrence that is considered valid.

Many backups in one directory.

VB Restore can handle many backups in one directory. It is also possible to have other files that belong to the project in the same directory, like help file sources etc. without disturbing VB Restore.