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#1 2022-07-03 08:57:45

ynikitenko
Member
From: Aachen, Germany
Registered: 2020-11-15
Posts: 44
Website

YARsync: a file synchronization and backup tool

Hi Arch community,

I released a new tool for file synchronization. It is a Python wrapper around rsync. For good features, it is:

  • distributed.

  • efficient. The program runs only on user request. Already transferred files will never be transmitted again.

  • non-intrusive. yarsync does nothing to user data. If one decides to stop using it, they can simply remove the configuration directory at any time.

  • simple.

  • safe.

See its github page for more details.

I know that there are many programs for file synchronization. Unfortunately, I could not find one for my quite basic needs, and decided that I shall do it myself based on an established tool rsync (so that it follows UNIX philosophy about relying on other tools). If you have a question about its difference from other existing programs, I would be glad to answer that. I also made a list of alternative tools.

----------------
Installation:

Install the yarsync package from AUR.
It will install an executable yarsync and its man page. Run

$ yarsync --help

to list available commands. Read the manual for a quick start.

----------------
Commands:

yarsync interface is based on git.

checkout
clone
commit
diff
init
log
pull
push
remote
show
status

As for the author, for me it is often a pleasure to work with this tool. The interface is very familiar, and data transfers are really efficient. Due to its simplicity, I can do any complicated things when I need (like splitting a repository). I hope it will be useful to other people, and if the community finds its design and features worthy, it will improve the tool even more.

This is my first release on AUR. I'd like to thank Jason Ryan, as well as Matthew T Hoare, for inspiring me to create a package for Arch Linux and Scimmia for a review of PKGBUILD. Please write if you could (or could not) install and run it on your system.

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#2 2023-03-10 08:01:25

ynikitenko
Member
From: Aachen, Germany
Registered: 2020-11-15
Posts: 44
Website

Re: YARsync: a file synchronization and backup tool

YARsync v0.2 has been released.

The new release fixes several bugs (sometimes some files were retransferred or copied instead of hard linked). It improves the clone command and adds synchronization information: now the user knows the synchronization state of all repositories they have been connected to (not only the last synchronization, as it was earlier).

The program has been released for Debian/Ubuntu. As before, it is available from PyPI and AUR.

The package classifier on PyPI has become stable. It has really helped me a lot, and now I can say that it is good software. Due to its power, simplicity (all commands are easily remembered because we know them from git) and advancement of quality file repositories, I believe that it shall become a standard synchronization/backup tool for Linux users.

The program has been announced in a Czech Linux journal Root.cz existing since 1999. I made a talk on that last month at the Winter seminar of our Physics institute at the RWTH Aachen University and posted news in several programming communities on telegram. Please try it and share your feedback!

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#3 2023-03-18 16:26:11

Stefan Husmann
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2007-08-07
Posts: 1,391

Re: YARsync: a file synchronization and backup tool

The PKGBUILD is broken. the check function fails , and issuing makpkg --nocheck complaints

yarsync-0.2/tests/test_dir_read_only/empty.txt: Can't unlink already-existing object: Permission denied
yarsync-0.2/tests/test_dir_ys_bad_permissions/forbidden/c: Can't unlink already-existing object: Permission denied
bsdtar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

Last edited by Stefan Husmann (2023-03-18 16:26:42)

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#4 2023-03-18 19:07:40

ynikitenko
Member
From: Aachen, Germany
Registered: 2020-11-15
Posts: 44
Website

Re: YARsync: a file synchronization and backup tool

Thank you, did you run PKGBUILD several times to get that behaviour? On the first time it didn't complain for me.

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#5 2023-03-28 18:30:04

ynikitenko
Member
From: Aachen, Germany
Registered: 2020-11-15
Posts: 44
Website

Re: YARsync: a file synchronization and backup tool

YARsync v0.2.1 has been done today. This patch release:

  • Adds --version command.

  • Improves diagnostic messages.

  • Improves documentation.

  • Fixes tests.

Thanks again to Stefan for pointing to errors in tests; I've been struggling with them for a long time (some flaky behaviour), but I hope that is fixed for now (I understood that and tox no longer complains). It didn't affect the program itself, but could be unpleasant during installation or testing.

There are also several installation improvements for AUR. Please check its page, but maybe I should copy it here: mandb is no longer a dependency. Installs yarsync documentation. Adds Python minimum version.

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