Attached - freshest version (barring disaster) will always be at: CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs＠cvs.hegbloom.net:/var/cvs/debian cvs checkout cvs-toolkit/cvs-work-backup I run this from my .crontab every few hours, like this: 00 0-23/3 * * * /usr/local/bin/cvs-work-backup --backup-dir /home/karlheg/Backup /usr/local/src/Packages/xemacs/{debian.xemacs,debian.xemacs-packages,xemacs-packages,xemacs-21.4,xemacs-21.5} It helps bulletproof me against command line typos and cleanfreak makefile targets, and perhaps against the `dired' follows symlinks bug. With that one, with a recent archive created by this thing, I can just restore that archive and cvs update to recover. Please let me know how it works for you, etc. I hope that the XEmacs repository has a good backup system! What is used there? I am curious about such things.