rbackup 0.5.1

Incremental, cross-platform and multithreaded backup tool written in Rust
Documentation

rbackup

rbackup is a fast, cross-platform, and multithreaded command-line utility written in Rust for performing incremental backups of directories. It is inspired by tools like rsync and robocopy, but designed with simplicity, portability, and localization in mind.

CI Licenza MIT Platform Versione

📋 View recent changes (Changelog)

✨ Features

  • 🚀 Incremental backup – copies only new or modified files
  • ⚡ Multithreaded – uses all CPU cores to speed up large backups
  • 🌍 Multilingual support – English and Italian (with auto-detection)
  • 📦 Portable – no installation required, single binary
  • 🧾 Optional logging – write backup reports to a file
  • 📊 Progress bar – display graphical progress bar during copy process
  • 🤫 Quiet mode – suppress all output for silent operation

📦 Installation

Packaging status

🐧 AUR (Arch Linux)

AUR

yay -S rfortune
# or
paru -S rfortune

🍺 Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

Homebrew Tap

brew tap umpire274/rbackup
brew install rbackup

🦀 Crates.io (Rust)

Crates.io

cargo install rbackup

📥 Download

Precompiled binaries are available in the Releases section.

Platform Architecture File
Windows x86_64 rbackup-<version>-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
Linux x86_64 rbackup-<version>-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
macOS x86_64 rbackup-<version>-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
macOS aarch64 rbackup-<version>-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz

🔐 GPG Signature

All release archives are cryptographically signed with GPG.

  • .sig files contain the ASCII-armored detached signature for the corresponding archive.
  • You can verify the archive with:
gpg --verify rbackup-<version>-<target>.tar.gz.sig rbackup-<version>-<target>.tar.gz

🔑 Public Key

The releases are signed with the following GPG key:

To import the key from a keyserver:

gpg --recv-keys 423FABCE0A1921FB

Or from OpenPGP server:

gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 423FABCE0A1921FB

Then verify the fingerprint:

gpg --fingerprint 423FABCE0A1921FB

🚀 Usage

rbackup <source> <destination> [OPTIONS]

✅ Basic example

rbackup ~/Documents /mnt/backup_drive/Documents

🧩 Options

Option Description
-q, --quiet Suppress console output
-t, --timestamp Prepend timestamp to messages
--log <FILE> Write output to a log file
-l, --lang <code> Force language (e.g. en, it)
-V, --version Show version
-h, --help Show help message

🔎 Exclude patterns (--exclude)

rbackup copy supports flexible exclude patterns to skip files and directories during a backup. The --exclude <PATTERN> option can be used multiple times to provide multiple glob patterns.

Where patterns are matched

  • By default patterns are matched against the path relative to the source directory. Example: with source /home/me/project, pattern build/** matches /home/me/project/build/foo.
  • Use --absolute-exclude to match the pattern against the absolute path of the source file instead.
  • The matcher also tests the file basename (the filename only). This means a simple pattern like $RECYCLE.BIN or Thumbs.db will match files whose name equals that string anywhere in the source tree.

Case sensitivity

  • By default matching is case-sensitive.
  • Use --ignore-case to enable case-insensitive matching for exclude patterns.

Examples

  • Exclude macOS DMG files and Thumbs.db files (case-insensitive):
rbackup copy /source /dest --log backup.log --exclude '*.dmg' --exclude 'Thumbs.db' --ignore-case
  • Exclude the Windows Recycle Bin directory by basename and hidden files starting with a dot:
rbackup copy /source /dest --exclude '$RECYCLE.BIN' --exclude '.*'

Tip: In zsh/bash wrap patterns that contain $ or other special characters in single quotes: '\$RECYCLE.BIN' or better '$RECYCLE.BIN'.

Absolute vs relative matching

  • Relative match (default): --exclude 'temp/**' will skip anything under source/temp/.
  • Absolute match: --absolute-exclude with --exclude '/home/me/project/temp/**' will match only that absolute path.

Dry-run and logging

  • Combine --dry-run with --log to generate a report of what would be copied or skipped — but without changing the destination:
rbackup copy /source /dest --exclude '*.tmp' --dry-run --log dryrun.log
  • The log file contains both Copied and Skipped entries. Skipped entries include the exclude pattern that caused the skip when applicable, which helps debugging complex exclude sets.

Use-cases

  • Backup only source code files, ignoring build artifacts:
rbackup copy /home/dev/project /backup/project --exclude 'target/**' --exclude '*.o' --exclude '*.class'
  • Mirror a user's Documents folder but exclude large media files and the Recycle Bin:
rbackup copy ~/Documents /mnt/backup/Documents --exclude '*.mp4' --exclude '$RECYCLE.BIN' --exclude 'Thumbs.db' --ignore-case
  • Debug why a file is skipped: run a dry-run with logging and inspect the log — each skipped line shows the pattern that caused the skip.

📝 Example

rbackup /home/alex/Projects /mnt/usb-backup --log backup.log --timestamp

🧪 Build from source

To compile rbackup yourself:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/rbackup.git
cd rbackup
cargo build --release

For Windows, rbackup.rc will be embedded automatically in the executable.

🔒 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

© 2025 Alessandro Maestri

💡 Contributing

Pull requests are welcome! If you’d like to add support for more languages, improve performance, or fix bugs, feel free to fork the repo and contribute.