So I’m diggin’ on my OpenLDAP backup provider. I have also recently been tinkering with a simple directory backup provider as well. At the heart of both of these, though is really just a simple idea which can be distilled down to a simple command. It has come up before but recently, Andy and I were going back and forth on the mailing list about what a generic Holland plugin might look like. While specific plugins are nice (I’m a huge advocate of them, in fact), having a simple generic plugin is a great catch-all in leu of a specialized plugin. Plugins require quite a bit of work to really be considered stable. Consider the need for a test suite, for example.
Well, over the weekend, Andy busted out a fairly complete generic backup plugin that can be used in cases where no other backup provider is available, and/or when the task is simple. I played around with it and was fairly happy. In fact, it could easily replace both my OpenLDAP and directory-backup plugins in their current iteration.
The hope is to eventually merge the generic backup plugin into the main tree and can expand Holland’s use case a great deal. I can already think of numerous places Holland can be of use. In this capacity, using it to do full backups, with retention, of, say, the /home directory of a shared file-server is wildly useful. For now it’s not ready for production just yet but, keeping in mind the beta quality of the plugin, it’s definitely worth trying out. Andy, myself, and the Holland community would appreciate any feedback as well!