Any Notepad++ plugins to automatically save document versions

Question

Hello,

Does anyone know of any notepad++ plugin that saves a version of whatever I'm working on periodically? Ideally, it would save many versions with the automatic version number and the date in the title, and perhaps store them in a zipped archive to save space.

Does something like this exist already, or shold I attempt to write such a plugin myself?

Thanks,
Cameron

P.S. It should be freeware or (preferably) open-source.

Answer 1

You might be better off looking into something closer to "real" version control - Mercurial, perhaps. It doesn't require a server, and it's really easy to set up.

To automate it, you could turn on autosave in Notepad++, and set up a windows scheduled task to do an hg commit every few minutes.

Answer 2

It seems that you are a windows user, so you have an option of using shadow copies, but copies are probably not genedated often enough.

IntelliJ Idea and some other Java IDEs have local history feature.

I personally use TortoiseSVN and svn server on Dreamhost. This had additional benefit of having my files stored off-site in case of disaster.

Answer 3

Settings > Preferences > Backup-Auto-completion tab > Click Verbose Backup and Tick Enable Auto-completion on each input

This will time stamp a copy of your file every time you save.

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Update:

AutoSave allows to automatically save the currently open files based on a timer schedule (default is 1 min) and/or upon the application losing focus. The plugin offers a couple of options to save the current (or all the files), selecting only the named ones, accessible through a menu.

[Via Lifehacker]

Answer 4

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

@falco1: I didn't know that there was even that feature built-in! It is not flexible enough for my needs, however, because it sticks all backups of all file in the same directory, and I wanted something with version numbers.

I've decided to write my own plugin in my spare time. The first version will be finished soon and I will find a way to distribute it for anybody who wants it.

Cheers,
Cameron

UPDATE: I started writing a little plug-in, but it wasn't very useful in the end (slow and a little buggy). I am now using version control for any files I'd like to keep different versions of.

Answer 5

fstellari.googlepages.com/npp_plugins