rustybackup

rustybackup started as a small learning scaffold and now demonstrates a simple incremental backup workflow implemented in Rust.

The command line interface can scan configured directories, copy changed files to a destination, manage historical versions and record the most recent backup state. Configuration is loaded from a TOML file.

Features

• Command line interface built with clap
• Configuration parsed with serde and toml
• scan shows files changed since the last backup while honoring exclude patterns
• backup copies changed files, keeps prior versions in a History folder and can resume if interrupted
• vacuum and status subcommands are placeholders for future features
• Persistent state.toml tracks snapshot IDs and records transfer statistics for each snapshot
• Stub module for reading the NTFS USN change journal on Windows

Building

1. Install Rust from rustup.rs.
2. Build the project with cargo build.
3. Run a command, e.g. cargo run -- --config config.toml scan.
4. Execute the test suite with cargo test.

Repository Layout

• src/main.rs - entry point and CLI definitions
• src/lib.rs - library exports used by tests
• src/config.rs - configuration structures
• src/state.rs - persistent backup state tracking
• src/backup.rs - scanning and backup logic
• src/journal.rs - changed file detection helpers
• tests/ - integration and unit tests

Configuration

Settings are loaded from a config.toml file. The file is divided into [paths] and [backup] sections:

[paths]
include = ["src"]          # directories to scan
exclude = ["*/temp"]      # optional glob patterns to ignore

[backup]
destination = "backups"   # where backup data and state are stored
keep_versions = true       # keep previous versions under a `History` folder
max_versions = 5           # limit history depth when set

Field descriptions:

• paths.include: directories that will be scanned for changed files.
• paths.exclude: list of patterns to skip during scanning.
• backup.destination: directory that receives the synchronized files and state.toml.
• backup.keep_versions: if true, prior versions of modified files are preserved in a History folder.
• backup.max_versions: optional maximum number of versions to keep when keep_versions is enabled.

See tests/test_config.toml for a minimal working example.

State file

state.toml stores metadata about the latest and previous backups. Each item in the stats array records:

• timestamp – when the backup completed
• snapshot_id – monotonically increasing identifier
• files_synced – count of files copied
• bytes_copied – total bytes transferred
• duration_ms – runtime in milliseconds