Comment 9 for bug 1170161

For the patch I posted, it is backward-compatible in the sense that a backup chain can contain files made with and without --alternate-filenames. I believe that is also true of the patch posted by epsilon, but perhaps he can comment on that.

It is not exactly true that lifecycle rules can be written that only apply to the new naming scheme -- because not all the file names are changed. The major purpose of the patch is to make it possible to write lifecycle rules that distinguish manifests from difftars.