NPP completely in the cloud - is it possible?

[oroboros]

I work off of mainly two computers, and I was thinking if I could install NPP “portably” for example in a Dropbox folder, where all settings and opened file sessions get synced.

I use NPP often as a little scrapbook for ideas and notes, with various files open. I got used to the fact that NPP “saves” the files (even if I haven’t saved it locally) as a bak or tmp file. I would like to be able to see these files across workstations.

Is this possible, and what would I need to do?

[Ekopalypse]

@oroboros

I don’t use this myself but there is an setting Cloud which can be used for this.
And I assume you have to modify your backup path.

[oroboros]

@Ekopalypse

Do you know what the difference is between “session backup” and “backup on save” is? Would you suggest having a “Backup” folder within my NPP cloud folder, and point both directories to that same one (or need they be different)?

[Ekopalypse]

@oroboros

If you have session snapshot and periodic backup enabled it means
that the files, currently loaded, are saved in the configured “backup” directory.
Those aren’t real backups. Let me try to explain with an example:

• user opens file X and modifies it
• npp is creating a “backup” file with the current content

the user has now the real file on disk and an additional “backup” file
create in a different location. But this “backup” file has a different
content then the original file.
User does further changes to the current loaded file
but still does not save it then only the “backup” file does get modified.
Once the user hits save, the real file gets updated and the “backup” file gets deleted. So the theory. But sometimes shit happens.
The backup on save feature creates a real backup - two files with identical content.

Does this makes sense to you?

[oroboros]

@Ekopalypse

Yes, I think it does, thanks! So it’s OK to keep the same directory for both, since one is for the backups of the opened files, and the other is for the session of the files that are open (just to confirm).

[Ekopalypse]

@oroboros
I would say yes.

[oroboros]

@Ekopalypse Thanks for all your help!

[Alan Kilborn]

So the snapshot backups are more to be thought of as “N++ buffer backups” rather than file-on-disk backups.

The filenames of created backups are a bit different:

• For the snapshot backups there’s a filename.ext@yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss file created (not literally, of course, hopefully that is understood).

• For the backup-on-save you get either filename.ext.bak (for Simple backup) or filename.ext.yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss.bak (for Verbose backup).