Importing And Removing Root Directories

Importing root directories

To import files that shall be observed by the HSD Versions Cleaner, suitable directories must be imported. In HSD Versions Cleaner’s terminology, these directories are called root directories . A root directory is a directory that contains the files to observe either directly or even indirectly within any subdirectory beneath the imported root directory.

An imported root directory always appears as a top level entry within the Navigator View’s directory/file hierarchy.

The Navigator View only shows files for which at least one old file version snapshot exists. But this doesn’t mean that a file not shown at a certain point of time will never be observed. As a matter of fact, its owning directory will always be observed, and as soon as a first snapshot has been stored for a file that belongs to an imported directory this file will be imported and observed from then on automatically.

Deep mode and flat mode root directories

By default, when importing a root directory, also its subdirectories will be imported as well as the subdirectories of the subdirectories and so on. Root directories imported this way are called deep mode root directories . This behavior, however, can be opted out while choosing a directory that shall be imported as a root directory - in this case the imported directory is then called flat mode root directory . For flat mode root directories only files within exactly that directory will be observed - files that belong to any descending subdirectory of an imported flat mode root directory will be ignored entirely.

Flat mode root directories allow to compose a fine grained set of files that should be observed. For the majority of users, however, importing directories as deep mode root directories should be appropriate.

To distinguish deep mode root directories from flat mode root directories, the Navigator View shows them in different font styles. These font styles can be changed within the User Preferences .

Importing a second, third, … etc, root directory

Of course, it’s possible to import more than just one root directory. However, there are two situations that should be taken into account:

When trying to import a directory that is a subdirectory of an already imported deep mode root directory nothing will actually change.
If you import a new directory and if there is an imported root directory that is a (direct or indirect) subdirectory of the new root directory, what will happen in such situations depends on whether the new directory is imported in flat mode or in deep mode:

When importing the new directory in flat mode, the already imported subdirectory remains an imported root directory.
When importing the new directory in deep mode, the already imported root directory won’t remain a root directory itself any longer. Instead its top level entry within the Navigator View’s table will be removed automatically and the directory will be treated like any other subdirectory of the newly imported deep mode root directory from then on. This also includes criteria settings for automatic deletion of old file version snapshots made for the previous root directory, i.e. they will be lost. Furthermore, even if the previous root directory was a flat mode root directory, it now belongs to a deep mode root directory and will therefore be treated appropriately.

The following two sections deal with the practical part of importing and removing root directories:

See Importing Root Directories to learn about the different ways a directory can be imported as a root directory.
Removing Root Directories explains how to get rid of an imported root directory again.

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