Sessions and backup

By default Birchpad asks nothing when you quit and loses nothing. The next start opens the same documents, files and untitled “new 1” alike, with unsaved changes, carets, scroll positions, folds, bookmarks, languages and encodings.

How it works

Every few seconds (7 by default) and on quitting, Birchpad writes copies of documents with unsaved text and a description of the session. A crash or a power cut loses at most the last interval. Files on disk are not touched until you save them.

settings.toml key	Default	Meaning
session.remember	true	Reopen the documents of the last run.
session.backup-unsaved	true	Keep unsaved changes in backup copies; quitting does not ask. Needs remember.
session.backup-interval-seconds	7	How often to back up, in seconds.

Without backups, quitting asks about each modified document (Save, Don’t Save, Cancel), and untitled documents are left out of the session. The -nosession command-line option neither restores nor saves the session. An administrator can forbid backups with the BackupUnsaved policy (see For administrators).

The session lives in the data folder (see Settings): session.toml, the previous one as session.toml.bak, and the copies in the backup folder. Only your account can read them.

Session files

File → Save Session… writes the open files with their positions, bookmarks, folds and languages (no unsaved text). File → Load Session… and -openSession open such a file next to what is open.

They also read Notepad++’s session.xml: the files of both views, carets, bookmarks, folds, language, read-only flag, and unsaved text from Notepad++’s backup copies.

Files changed by other programs

Birchpad watches open files (files.change-detection: all, current or off). A changed file without unsaved changes is reloaded, silently or after asking (files.reload-silently), keeping carets, bookmarks and folds on their lines. With unsaved changes, or when the file was deleted, Birchpad asks.

View → Monitoring (tail -f) reads only what is appended to the file, handy for logs.