There's a popular backup program that has rsync like functionality at its base but provides much more called rdiff-backup. It's written in Python, so putting flyback on top of that wouldn't be too hard.

One main difference between using rsync and rdiff-backup is that rdiff-backup stores binary diffs for files that are different. rsync will store a complete different copy of a file, even if only a few bytes out of many are different.

Check it out at:

http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

Regards, Blair

I would suggest http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/ instead. Just like rdiff-backup, but with encryption and many possible targets.

looks like a cool program but we would lose the "backups don't require any special software to restore" feature...

I've seen you already have functions, which return the correct commandlines. Just use a class:

class BackupBackend: def getBackupcommand(self, srcDir, destDir): pass def getRestorecommand(self, srcDir, destDir, file): pass

and a class: class rsyncBackup(backupBackend): ... class duplicityBackup(backupBackend): ...

i understand the how, just not the why. one of the great things about time machine is that you don't need any special software to access your data once it's backed up. and this is a feature i want to emulate in flyback. rdiff-backup would break this.

That's not really a feature of Time Machine that your normal user will ever use. They won't cd into the hidden Time Machine directory and recover a file, they'll use the Time Machine GUI.

I'd rather have a more fulfeatured backup system then something I can cd into.

And if you want the command line, you can always run rdiff-backup --restore "1 day ago" .

how about an option between rdiff-backup and rsync?

Here's the why: 1) I have a 4000MB video from my DV camcorder 2) Flyback backs up 4000MB 3) I edit the video, changing 1MB of it 4) Flyback backs up 4000MB

Flyback is now storing 8000MB for the video, when it would only store 4001MB with rdiff-backup. In my view, this is a bug in Time Machine which you don't need to emulate.