anyback

anyback is a command-line tool for backing up and restoring Anytype spaces.

See anyback.1.md for detailed CLI documentation.

Alpha Release

• This is an alpha version - Testing is still in progress. If you're adventurous, please give it a try. File any issues on github.

Features

• Backup Anytype spaces (full or selective)
  • incremental backup using --since (timestamp)
  • selective backup using --objects (object list)
  • optional: --include-files, --include-nested, --include-archived
• Restore backups to original or new space
  • optional --replace to overwrite existing objects
  • --dry-run to validate without importing
• Browse archives with an interactive TUI (inspect)
  • view object properties, metadata, and markdown preview
  • export files and simplified object markdown
  • configurable preview cache budget with --max-cache (default 200 MiB)
• List archive contents, compare archives, extract objects

Commands

anyback backup  --space NAME_OR_ID [OPTIONS]
anyback restore ARCHIVE --space NAME_OR_ID [OPTIONS]
anyback list    ARCHIVE [--brief|--expanded|--files]
anyback manifest ARCHIVE
anyback diff    ARCHIVE1 ARCHIVE2
anyback extract ARCHIVE ID OUTPUT
anyback inspect ARCHIVE [--max-cache SIZE]
anyback auth    ...

export and import are aliases for backup and restore.

Usage Notes

• Object lists: --objects FILE reads one object ID per line (blank lines and # comments ignored). Use --objects - for stdin.
• Backup output:
  • --dir DIR creates a timestamped archive in an existing directory.
  • --dest PATH creates an archive at a specific path.
  • --prefix PREFIX sets the archive name prefix (with --dir or default .).
  • Backup produces .zip archives.
• Import modes:
  • --import-mode ignore-errors (default): continue after errors.
  • --import-mode all-or-nothing: stop on first error (not transactional; already-imported objects are not rolled back).
• Restore reports: --log REPORT.json writes a JSON report with success/failure details.
• Archive formats: list, diff, inspect, and restore accept both .zip archives and unpacked archive directories.
• Manifest: anyback writes manifest metadata to <archive>.manifest.json. Archives without manifests (e.g. desktop-generated backups) are still supported.

Development

Library Crate

This package also exposes a reusable Rust library crate, anyback_reader, for archive traversal and snapshot file inspection. Library consumers can use default-features = false to exclude CLI-only dependencies.

Restore Transport

• Default restore transport is path-based (PbParams.path).
• Snapshot transport is compiled behind the opt-in snapshot-import cargo feature and used for selective restore (--objects).
• Snapshot transport supports *.pb archives; *.pb.json restore is not yet supported.
• Snapshot chunk limits (env overrides):
  • ANYBACK_IMPORT_MAX_SINGLE_SNAPSHOT_BYTES (default 2 MiB)
  • ANYBACK_IMPORT_MAX_BATCH_BYTES (default 3 MiB)
  • ANYBACK_IMPORT_MAX_BATCH_SNAPSHOTS (default 128)

Integrity Testing

Fuzz testing for backup/restore roundtrips:

cargo test -p anyback --test integrity_nightly -- --ignored --nocapture

Environment controls: