methods: 'recordable' -> 'stateful' ?

Folks, at least some of you will know that an ARK method can
be marked as 'recordable'; when you then run it, it drops a
file in a directory (something like)
/system/ark-state/package/<method>--<platform>.xml, and the
system will then not knowingly re-run that method.

This is very handy.  If you've run the 'compile' method for
'gcc--3.0.2', for example, you'd just as soon not do it
again 200 times :-)

I am wondering about renaming the 'recordable' attribute to
'stateful'.

The idea is: we could then make *all* methods "recordable"
(i.e. we'd dribble a file about what we'd done), but only
the "stateful" ones would have the don't-do-it-again-effect.

I am also wondering about making the state files do backups,
perhaps like Emacs numbered backups.  Run a method the first
time, and you drop the expected <method>--<platform>.xml.

Second time, the old one becomes
<method>--<platform>.xml.~1~ and the new one becomes, well,
guess what.  And so on.

I would rather not get too anal about this recording of
state; but I wonder if these modest steps would be
useful... Comments most welcome.

Will