Hi All,
I just posted an email response from Craig (BackupPC creator) on the development mail list.
I thought I should post it here as well. I promise, last message from me on the user list in regards to this topic. : )
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David & team,
Thanks for reaching out and gathering interested parties.
Yes, as Stephen passed along, unfortunately my day job has kept me really busy over the last couple of years. So I simply haven't had any time to devote to BackupPC, and I haven't even had time to keep up with the mail lists either. Most of 4.0 development happened when I was able to take a few months off between jobs in 2013.
It would be great to get help in moving things forward again. Having some people contribute in various areas would definitely help, and motivate me to find some time to work on it again. The current 4.0 is generally pretty stable and works well (albeit I haven't been watching the mail list). As you noted, FTP is the one area that's not finished. The original FTP code was contributed and it has some significant issues. I suspect FTP is rarely used - we could simply drop it for 4.0, or I can revisit my latest code (not yet checked in) to see how much more there is to do?
So, yes, help with the project would be great.
Amazingly, I've never used github - just goes to show how out of touch I've become :(. But I agree moving all the development to github makes sense. Actually, it looks like that's started to happen, eg: https://github.com/backuppc. That looks like 3.x, while rsync-bpc and backuppc-xs are 4.x. Maybe we should have backuppc3 for 3.x, and backuppc is 4.x?
In terms of contributions, all kinds can be very helpful (feel free to augment this and repost to the user or developer lists if you want): - perusing the mail lists and finding bug reports that can be concisely documented and/or replicated. There are also feature requests that are worth keeping track of. I last did this over the xmas holidays in 2014/15, which led to the last release of 3.3.1 in Jan 2015. So I'm almost 1.5 years behind on doing this, and as more time goes by I feel like I need even more time to catch up
- actually fixing and patching bugs
- testing (given the big user base, it became more nerve wracking doing new releases given how little time I had left to do testing...)
- releases (actually generating releases, posting announcements etc)
- writing code for new releases and features (mainly perl, but 4.0 has significant portions of C code)
- updating rsync-bpc to be based on the most recent rsync; can be done mostly by applying diffs, but some hand work required, especially if rsync has changed a lot.
- refreshing cygwin-rsyncd for 3.x users
- wiki needs a complete restart (somewhere I have tarballs of the old wiki, but it was relatively disorganized)
- documentation
- user support (there's been a great group of people selflessly providing user support, which has been one of the most important parts of the project's success, and one of the main things that kept me motivated to keep working on the project)
The more people can do the better! I'd be happy to try to commit the time to finish off 4.0 (help there would be great; even just testing help), and I would definitely be interested in reviewing patches and other code submissions (eg: for every release I carefully look at the diffs from the prior release). ![]()
Craig
On Tue, 17 May 2016, David Cramblett wrote:Craig,
I'm writing to you on behalf of the active users of the BackupPC mailing list. We have been tossing around the idea of helping out with the BackupPC
project for the last year or so. In the recent days, critical mass has finally been achieved and we have some volunteers stepping up.
We have been discussing how we could help and what's needed to keep BackupPC supported with future operating system updates, third party software
libraries, etc. As well as getting v4 out of beta, it works quite well (and I have seen a very nice performance boost!).
However, we're all in agreement, the first order of business was to reach out to you and see if you're even interested in the help?
Stephen Joyce shared with us that he had communicated with you recently offering some help. Stephen said you had let him know you were still very
interested in your project, but that time was tight right now with other obligations. He also said he has access to the BackupPC SF site and was
hoping to apply some patches he was aware of, and do something about the wiki being shut down by SF. He also let us know that you were holding off
on v4 mostly due to an implementation of the FTP client.
With all that in mind:
1) Are you interested in some assistance with the BackupPC project?
2) If yes. We were also interested in porting the project over to GitHub. GitHub provides us with some more modern tools and ease of collaboration,
I'm betting your familiar. Would this be something you would be okay with? We would expect that you would be a project administrator on GitHub if
the project was migrated.
Most important to all of us, is that anything we do, is with your blessing. We appreciate all the work you have put into BackupPC over the years,
and the benefits we have received from that effort. If you are interested in accepting our assistance, we are happy to provide assistance under
whatever format you would like. If you would like to continue to control releases, features, etc., we would be happy to provide help under whatever
model you prefer. We by no means are attempting to hijack the BackupPC project, nor do we want a bunch of BackupPC forks to pop up that don't meet
the high quality standards you have met in the past.
I have cc'd Stephen Joyce, Mauro Condarelli, and Lars Tobias Skjong-Børsting on this communication. Stephen obviously has been in communication with
you about the project and has access to the SF site. Mauro and Lars have stepped up to help get the community of developers organized and on the
right track in the event that your amenable to the assistance.
I hope this message finds you well and we look forward to your response,
Regards,
David
--
David Cramblett
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