Versioning - oddity or designed behaviour?

[Godmcgarvey]

As much as I love FFS I have always had a problem with Versioning in that it will not remove old versions regardless of the rules in place.

I have run an experiment and backed a slightly changed test.txt file 4 times and this gave me three backed up versions with the correctly changed names to indicate date

For example test.txt 2020-06-23 172052.txt

My settings indicate Last x days set to 1 with no minimum or maximum.

I would assume after two days those versions would be deleted but they have not been even after 5 days. I have fun the Configuration file in both Compare and Sync even though there is nothing new to Sync just to see if that was a requirement.

They are only deleted when I save another copy of test.txt. This erases the three previous backups and leaves just one new one.

This would be fine if the same file is changed on a regular basis but what if a file is a one off or rare change? Would I potentially be left with an orphaned file years old?

Am I missing something very obvious or is this how it's been designed to work?

[Zenju]

What you describe sounds like the behavior of old FreeFileSync versions. In newer ones it doesn't matter which file gets updated: The whole versioning folder is checked for outdated items after sync, which are then cleaned up accordingly.

[Godmcgarvey]

It says Version 10.25.

I have coloured config folders in the left pane which I believe is a later addition

When you say it doesn't matter "which" file gets updated does it need at least one file updated even if not the one that has the versions I want deleted?

[Zenju]

does it need at least one file updated even if not the one that has the versions I want deleted?

Exactly. If there is nothing to sync FFS will just skip the folder pair and make no attempt at cleaning up old versioning files.

[Mobius]

What you describe sounds like the behavior of old FreeFileSync versions. In newer ones it doesn't matter which file gets updated: The whole versioning folder is checked for outdated items after sync, which are then cleaned up accordingly.

In which version of FreeFileSync was this behavior changed (so that I know which version I need to be on)? I searched the release archive change notes without success.