Back In Time

Is there any dialog about being the default backup program for Ubuntu?

Asked by Nils Herde

As far as I remember BiT was considered when the decision to have a backup program by default was taken. Going with deja-dup was decided based upon the ability to perform remote backups and, as far as I remember, encryption as well.

The first feature has been there for some time now and works great, and the second looks like it's coming along nicely. Have you thought about negotiating or proposing yourselves for the next LTS for example?

I would imagine a simplified standard mode with fewer options would be welcomed for the normal user, but you should of course keep todays settings in a advanced mode for the power users. As I see it now, BiT is superior to deja-dup in pretty much every way!

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Germar (germar) said : 		#1

Hi Nils,

Thanks for your kind words. But I think there is still a lot of thinks to do to catch up with Deja Dup.

Just to name some:
- Remote backup is only possible with ssh by now. Even if I wouldn't recommend (because of poor performance compared with ssh) we will need to add CIFS/NFS/Ubuntu One/...
- a progress indicator and integration into Ubuntu Dash as well as a function to pause/stop a running snapshot
- the help is completely outdated (good for someone who would like to contribute without being a dev ;-)
- change to python3

I recently filled a bug report for Ubuntu to update to latest upstream version because the original repository is still on 1.0.10. If that is fixed it will be quite easy move to Backintime again.

Regards,
Germar

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Vassilis Palassopoulos (palasso) said : 		#2

Instead of filling a bug report for Ubuntu to update to latest upstream version how about contacting the Debian package maintainer?

http://packages.ubuntu.com/saucy/backintime-common
http://packages.debian.org/sid/backintime-common

I see that BiT is on the universe repo without an "Ubuntu" substring on the versioning of the package name which means it gets automatically updated to what is included in Debian sid (for standard releases).

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebianImportFreeze

DebianImportFreeze has passed for 13.10 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseSchedule

But it could make it for 14.04. Although it's an LTS release and if I understood properly it will update to what is included in Debian Testing

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTSDebianImportFreeze

And if BiT won't make it to Testing till February 6th https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TSeries/ReleaseSchedule

then it'll be updated on 14.10.

Pros:

1. It reduces duplication of effort for package maintainers (instead of one ubuntu package maintainer and one debian package maintainer in the future updating the package, only one package is updated on debian)

2. Larger number of distros get latest version (Debian-based as well as Ubuntu-based)

Cons:

1. It might not make it to Testing in time so it might not be available until 14.10
(Maybe kindly informing the Debian package maintainer about it would help things here?)

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Germar (germar) said : 		#3

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't know about how this works.

There is already a bugreport for Debian, too. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=707198
Which should have been reported to Jonathan Wiltshire, the Debian Maintainer. But I'll try to contact him directly.

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