'rdiff-backup' is a back-up utility that stores subsequent versions of a file as diffs against a master copy, rather in the manner of RCS or CVS. From 'pkg/DESCR': Rdiff-backup backs up one directory to another, possibly over a network. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. Rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, hard links, dev files, permissions, uid/gid ownership (if it is running as root), and modification times. Finally, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted. It's potentially useful for those storing back-ups on disk, rather than tapes, for cost reasons. Attached are 'rdiff-backup.tgz' and 'librsync.tgz', a supporting library. Tested on i386, -current and 3.1-stable. This program is written mostly in Python, and depends on 'lang/python/2.2'. That port, unfortunately, has default dependencies on X11, tk, tcl, GNU MP, and expat, controlled by the "FLAVORS" mechanism. Someone wanting to use this program would of course need to install Python. But having having to take X11, tk, tcl, and the rest just to get a simple back-up utility is exactly the sort of ridiculous dependency that used to drive me crazy in Debian Linux. So is there any to way to make the Python dependency use the "no_tkinter no_mpz no_expat" flavor by default? David S.
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rdiff-backup.tgz
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librsync.tgz
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