Difference to seperate folder?

[messmail]

I hope this has not already been answered, I searched but did not find it.

Is there a way to do a compare between two folders and then write the differences to another folder?
(deletes excluded obviously)

Is that somehow possible?

Use case:

I use freefilesync a lot, also when I'm upgrading websites.
These upgrades are done in steps and I would like to backup the new or changed file in the separate steps.

Because there are a lot of files I would like to do a compare and then copy only the differences to a separate folder (a complete backup takes a lot of time)

I would start with a normal sync to my Backup folder.
After the first upgrade I would like to copy only the new files to a folder called "step1"
Same for step 2 etc.

Thanks, Timo

[dwig]

I hope this has not already been answered, I searched but did not find it.

Is there a way to do a compare between two folders and then write the differences to another folder?
(deletes excluded obviously)

Is that somehow possible?

Use case:

I use freefilesync a lot, also when I'm upgrading websites.
These upgrades are done in steps and I would like to backup the new or changed file in the separate steps.

Because there are a lot of files I would like to do a compare and then copy only the differences to a separate folder (a complete backup takes a lot of time)

I would start with a normal sync to my Backup folder.
After the first upgrade I would like to copy only the new files to a folder called "step1"
Same for step 2 etc.

Thanks, Timo

This sounds like it calls for a source control/version control system
rather than a file sync (Subversion and Git are two examples). If
you're not familiar with the concept, though, there'll be a learning curve.

Regards,

--

Don Dwiggins
Advanced Publishing Technology

[Zenju]

> After the first upgrade I would like to copy only the new files to a folder called

Not sure if this is what you want, but FreeFileSync can be used as a simple versioning control replacement: Just setup "deletion handling" in sync settings to "versioning" and specify a target folder. All deleted and overwritten files will be moved to this folder rather than deleted permanently during synchronization. This allows for a space-optimized way to keep all your old versions of all files.

[messmail]

@dwig I'm using SVN for development work, so I know the concept.
The files I'm trying to "backup" are a too many & too big to check in on every upgrade step. (I'm trying to make the steps reversible with minimum backup time)

@zenju That is a bit different from what I thought of, but it might do the trick.
It would allow me to write only the changed files back to the source folder to "reverse" an upgrade. I'll try it. Thanks!
(Also for one of my favourite OS tools :-)