A question for organising software and patches

[itsme28m]

Hi,

Over the years, i always download new freeware and shareware software by hand (for a month or two also xyplorer :p), when i save it, i keep it seperate in a freeware and shareware folder, under the freeware folder i have all freeware programs under video/audio/graphics/.... and i always add the number of the version behind the filename, so i know wich version it is. And somethimes i keep a few versions just in case...


Now, my question is, is there any way to synchronise or automatically delete earlier versions and then backup everything? I don't see that this is possible today, for synchronising the filenames need to be thesame, but if i want to keep the filenames thesame i don't know what version it is, and if i make a directory for every new version that comes out would even mean more work then i do now to handle this...

Maybe it's better when i don't download every single version of a program... it seems i download more then that i use, i have a few programs where i downloaded 7 or more new versions and i'm still working with the older version .

But it still would be better to make it possible to automatically remove earlier versions and then backup everything. For this, the application should check all identical names, and then remove the earlier names and keep the last number that's behind the filename. But it would also be safe to have an overview of what gets deleted before the application or the user deletes it...

Does anybody know such a program? or maybe something like this build into xyplorer?

[j_c_hallgren]

I'm not aware of any software that would automate this and don't really see how XY could assist either...but I know the problem! How I handle it is to name all my downloaded pgrms generally in three parts, separated by " - ", with the first part being the site that I got it from...This helps to locate where to get newer/replacement vers from, as sometimes the names of the product and vendor have no relationship.

Then as second part, I put the name of product or variation so I know what it does...and third part is the file name with vers added, if not supplied....so a typical filename might be: "2BrightSparks - SyncBack - Setup_3_2_9.exe" or "Sourceforge_net - Audacity - win.1.2.4.zip".
When the vendor and product name are identical, I may skip the 2nd part.

I then keep the downloaded files in separate folders based on status: downloads, installed, pending, or deinstalled (as sometimes I've tried something and removed it, but may retry at later date)...within these four groups, I typically separate by freeware, shareware, vendor (Dell,etc.) and Microsoft...but downloads tends to be all in one folder.

This method of organization has helped me greatly to keep track of what I have on my system...so thought I'd share in case it might be of use to someone else..

I can thus sort by filenames and see what versions I have, if multiple, and keep "duplicates" under control.

[lukescammell]

I do pretty much the same as you JC, but I use a comma and a space instead of a hyphen (, ). It works out one character shorter (useful for me as I sometimes go a little OTT with file name lengths ) and means that you can very easily convert file names into comma delimited files. The story behind needing to do that is boring, but needless to say, it was incredibly useful at the time.

Also, I'd be tempted to just use a dot instead of an underscore for the site tld just because then it's easier to copy&paste. So scourceforge.net instead of sourceforge_net.

Once you combine a robust naming scheme, as JC recommends, and combine it with XY's visual filters (^J) it becomes very easy to manage a directory with many files in it.