Re: backup method

[Richard Stallman]

    > Then of course there is the silent breaking of hard links.

    Which is why backup-by-copying-when-linked should be t by default.

You may be thinking of cases where you want the other name to continue
to refer to the latest version of the file.  Those cases exist.  But
there are also cases where the contents of other name should remain
unchanged.  Backup by renaming does that job right.

If you want the other name to always refer to the latest version,
you could get that result with a symlink.  So I think the current
defaults are best.  They make it possible to get both behaviors.