DO12 - Restore not fully functioning

When restoring a full backup with the option to completely replace the existing configuration, all my custom toolbars (the ones from DO11) don't appear. I have to select them in the toolbar menu and drag them to their right places (where they were when making the backup).

I also noticed that the tab colors I set are gone. I don't know all the things I've adjusted the past day so I can't tell if anything else goes wrong. But I can see other settings are restored fine so it's not that the whole restore is broken.

When Opus imports or upgrades over a config from an earlier major version (e.g. 11.x vs 12.x) it may move custom toolbars to backup copies and reset to the default toolbars. "Your old toolbars are still there after you upgrade" explains in some more detail and has instructions on how to turn your old ones back on.

Note that you'll probably want to copy at least some of the changes form the new defaults over, particularly the new Properties > Set Label and Status items.

Tab colors behave differently in Opus 12. If we're talking about the colors for linked tabs, those are now used to change the color of the chain icon on the tab, and not the whole tab. Tabs can also have colors assigned down their edges, as an accent, to indicate the tab itself (whether or not it is linked) or to indicate particular folders.

Some of this is demonstrated in the What's New video, where the Folder Tabs section starts at 9m10s:

I know how the new features work. I have no problem setting them, I have a problem restoring things. Because I'm trying all new things in DO12 I regurlarly make backups of my settings. But reverting to a previous backup does not bring all my settings back.

I will keep the new toolbars and move stuff over from the old ones. But I have also some total custom made tool bars.
When I restored my settings in DO11 all the toolbars re-appear on the place they were during backup. This is not the case anymore with DO12. At least not with the toolbars from DO11.

The other problem is that when I restore the backup the colors I set for the edge of tabs are gone. The color for the active tab is restored.

So backing up and restoring in DO12 has its problems.

Are you restoring a backup made with Opus 12, or restoring a backup made with Opus 11 into Opus 12?

I'm backing up and restoring in DO12

There are strange things going on with the backup.
Things changed since initial post: I have moved my custom stuff to the new toolbars and removed the old toolbar. I have still one fully custom toolbar from DO11 which is only slightly changed.
I also made a tabgroup in a dual horizontal lister and assigned colors to some tabs in the upper and lower window. Those colors are nicely shown in the previews in the Manage Tabgroups Window.

Restoring with replacing the existing configuration now leaves that custom toolbar where it was when I did a backup so that's ok for now.

The restore of tabs and tab colors are still not ok. The colors of some tabs are gone and even tabs that were not open at the time of the backup appear.
When I select the saved tabgroup all colors appear and the tabs that were not open at the time of the backup are gone. The latter is logical because the extra tabs were not saved in the tab group.

The extra tabs were open in earlier backups and also the colors that do appear were there some backups ago. (I took a lot of backups while customizing; every time in a new file by adding a suffix.) It just looks like the restore process is using some older settings to restore things.

In an other test I revert to the saved tabgroup and opened some new tabs and did a new backup. After the restore those new tabs are not restored. Strange enough, I get the same situation as the previous restore mentioned at the beginning of this message. (Some colors missing and re-appearing already closed tabs).

As far as I can tell al my customizations I've done yesterday and today are properly restored. Fortunately, because it took me quite took some time. Thankfully I also saved the tabgroups so I can revert to the desired situation quickly. But this is not how the restore supposed to work.

So the questions are

  1. why are not all tab and tab colors restored?
  2. where do the old tabs come from?

What do you mean by open tabs?

Tab groups do not track which tabs are open, or have any effect other than that you can load or save a list of tabs. If you load a tab group and then open or close some tabs, it has no effect on that tab group unless you save over the group again; anything else is just changing the current window.

If that still doesn't explain what is happening, can you tell us a step-by-step way to reproduce the problem you're seeing?

I know that when I open or close tabs those tabs are not appear when loading the tabgroup again. I know I have to save the group.

The problem is that the open tabs do not appear after a restore from a backup. And already closed tabs do appear after a restore. This is not what I expect from a full restore.

I just did a new test. I chose different tabgroups and after the restore I got the same result as mentioned in the previous post. It looks like the restore does not revert to the tabgroup that were in use at the time of the backup and instead revert to the folders I opened 'manually' earlier this day.
But
For another test I did not chose any tabgroups after the restore. I did set colors on some tabs and closed some tabs.
I did a backup and restore. Once again the the same situation as with the previous restores. The same tabs are lacking color and again the closed tabs appear. And by closed tabs I mean the ones that I closed at least half a day ago.

So I backup different situations of tabs and colors but every time get the same end result after a restore.

I am still unsure exactly what we're talking about here.

Can you give step by step instructions on what to do to reproduce the problem?

Are we just talking about the current open windows? Those aren't really intended to be backed up as they are not a permanent part of your configuration; just a temporary thing. It's probably backing up the state of when you last exited Opus or last closed a window if we're talking about that.

Not intended for backup? The backup and restore options are local state data (windows positions etc). That's kind of misleading. But you're right, tabs are not saved during backup.

Here's what I described in the post before. The top situation are the two tabs from my duo lister before backing up and the bottom two after a immediate restore. You can see that the tabs are not the same and even worse some tab colors are gone.


After closing DO and closing the tray icon I did the same. This is the result. Exact the same situation be


So it seems the state is only backed up after fully closing DO. That's not user friendly.
I'm not really concerned about tabs that are different before and after a restore. It does matter to me however, that the tab colors are not remembered.
I know now that I can save the tab colors by saving the tabs in tabgroups but this should really not be the case. The tab colors are part of the setting and should be backed up and restored. Always, and not only after a total shut down of DO (be it manual or afater restarting Windows).

The backup function backs up the config files that are on disk. It's not intended to be a complete snapshot of the program state including what's in memory.

But you have to agree that the tab colors have nothing to do with the program state. Those are settings and should be included.

And as I mentioned the option backup/restore local state data (windows positions etc) is misleading.

Tab colors which you have not saved to disk in any way are just in-memory state. As are the tabs themselves, and the windows they are in.

If you want to make your tab colors permanent, you need to save them. e.g. Settings > Set as Default Lister, if you want them to be your default. Or save a named Lister Layout, or Folder Tab Group, if you don't want them as your default but want to be able to re-create either the window or the tabs later.

Those will both be backed up, since they are saved state, not just what's in memory right now.

Tab colors
I don't get it. When I close DO and the tray icon and re-open DO the tab colors are still there for the tabs that do not belong to a tab group or are saved in any other way. And yet, there they are when starting DO. I assume that when I close DO tab colors are not floating around in memory. So where are they saved?

I'm aware of the option of saving tab groups and also using it. But when I open a new tab and add a color it is very inconvenient to have to save this separately. First I don't always want that tab in any tabgroup or lister and second it takes unnecessary steps for me to take.

Why are tab colors not saved like color labels for files? I would like to see this as a feature.

Another feature I like to see is that the tabs take over the color of the folder color label (if one is set of course). To me this would be more useful than random tab colors and also solves the problem of disappearing tab colors.

State
State is back-upped but not always.

If state is not preserved how is it possible that when I restore an older backup I get exactly the tabs as in the first situation and when I restore a recent backup I get the situation as in the second picture.

The difference in backups is that the latter was made after a full shut-down of DO. It looks like it's only backing up the state after a complete shut-down and restart of DO. So the state at which DO starts is back upped every time, no matter what tabs you open or close in the meantime.

You probably have Opus set to remember the windows it has open when it closes* and then re-open them when it re-starts.

(*Either when the whole program is exited with windows still open, or each time you close a window. There are two separate settings.)

Backing up the config does not close the program or any windows, so you will be backing up whatever was saved the previous time you closed things. That is still the current state because that particular state is updated when things are closed.

It is only temporary state, as far as we are concerned, but it is saved to disk as it needs to survive a restart or reboot. The 'save on close' implicit state is for "I want to re-open the window I had 5 minutes ago or just before the reboot I just did", short-term memory. It's not for long-term "I want to re-open my archived, pristine/definitive state". There's an argument that we should not back it up at all, I guess, but that may cause more problems.

You can keep temporary state in the air for a long time and make it feel permanent, but that isn't how things are designed to work. And if something causes a different type of window to open, and you then close the program or window in that situation, then you may have lost your tabs etc. as they were never explicitly saved. And then there's no way to get them back, as they've been overwritten by some new implicit/temporary state.

Use Settings > Set as Default Lister to explicitly save the current lister as the default. That will be backed up.

The options under Preferences / Launching Opus / Default Lister and Preferences / Launching Opus / Startup also come into play, in terms of what is saved and loaded, and when.

The windows you have open currently are not state that Opus backs up. Similarly, it doesn't back-up which files are currently selected. Both are considered transient state.

Thanks for making that clear. :thumbsup:
The state indeed felt permanent so that was confusing me.
I now understand what to save when I want to keep things permanent.