Idea X 96.1121- File | Settings | Local History - disappeared

Hello Vladimir,

The period is indeed no longer configurable - it's fixed at 7 working days.
We don't let you set a longer period because the local history is not designed
to be used as a long-term versioning solution - you should use a real VCS
for keeping track of changes over a longer time period.

File | Settings | Local History just disappeared, how to change the
number of days to keep local history changes

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

I do use SVN, but please put that option back. A lot of time I have some prototype stuff that I don't check in but want to go back to it after some period of time. If it doesn't affect the performance please reenable this feuture.

Thanks

Hello Vladimir,

First of all, note that the implementation uses "working days" - that is,
days during which you have actually touched the code. We won't delete the
stored local history of a project if you haven't touched it for a month and
then go back to working on it again

Second, the reliability of the local history is not guaranteed. If you want
to be certain that you would be able to see the history of something you've
been working on, you have to use a real version control system for that.

I do use SVN, but please put that option back. A lot of time I have
some prototype stuff that I don't check in but want to go back to it
after some period of time. If it doesn't affect the performance please
reenable this feuture.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

Thanks for answer, I don't want to be certain, actually it is not really important for me, I just want to be able to control this especially if this functionality has been already implemented and served me well for more then 6 years.

I understand that Recycle Bin is not a backup solution but want to empty it when I find it full instead of anybody else :)  and what is this magic number 7? why not 3 or 30?

Thanks

I can see your point about using SVN, but I can tell you for sure that having local history built into the editor that automatically pulls in each change makes a HUGE difference.  Would it be a huge problem to put it back?  7 days is nowhere long enough.  I always set mine to 365.  I have plenty of disk space to burn and it only helps me to have this additional information available to me.

If you don't want to maintain the UI, how about allowing us to override it in the idea.exe.vmoptions?

"Second, the reliability of the local history is not guaranteed."   you _really_ better not rely on local history - as soon as IDEA's indexes die for some reason, it will be gone as well

May I suggest a much more robust alternative for you? You can both keep using SVN for the server, and get a disk-based history (albeit much more versitale) by using the git-svn bridge. IDEA has decent support for Git today, so you really wouldn't notice a difference in terms of functionality. This may get you started: http://blogs.mulesoft.org/git-and-svn-happily-ever-after/

I'd love the setting to be put back - I don't put it at anywhere near 365 days currently, mine's set at 3 weeks.  

We carry out 3 week sprints and I use this feature an absolute tonne during that time - even if it was a setting in the properties file to stop a majority of people using it, this is a major drawback for this version for me!

I don't rely on it, but I could count on one hand the number of times it's failed over the last 5 years for me.

Aha, I've just found out you can modify the setting through the maintenance registry - that's perfect for me :)

What is the "maintenance registry" and where can I find it until this situation is fixed?

Ctrl + Shift + Alt + / ;)