Barkup

Barkup is a Python-based CLI tool for automating personal backups to local and cloud storage (Google Drive), with incremental, hash-checked copies and a config-driven workflow.

Motivation

Barkup started because I needed a reliable way to automatically back up the photos from my final year at university — and the ones I'll keep taking at conferences and elsewhere — to somewhere safe like Google Drive. I soon realized the same approach covers my eBooks and other files too. Barkup is the result: a small, config-driven CLI I built for myself, and my first personal project on boot.dev.

Quick Start

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/abu-bilaall/barkup
cd barkup
uv sync

# Scaffold a config, then edit it
uv run barkup init
# writes ~/.config/barkup/config.toml — set [general].sources and [local].destination, then run

# Run your first backup
uv run barkup run

# List what's backed up
uv run barkup list

Once installed, the barkup command is available via uv run barkup. You can also install the console script directly (uv pip install -e .), or install from PyPI once published (pip install barkup).

Usage

Configuration

Barkup loads and deep-merges config from these locations, lowest to highest priority:

1. /etc/barkup/config.toml (system)
2. ~/.config/barkup/config.toml (user; respects XDG_CONFIG_HOME)
3. ./barkup.config.toml (current directory)
4. --config <PATH> (CLI flag — highest priority)

A minimal config:

[general]
profile_name = "default"
dry_run = false
sources = ["/home/you/Documents", "/home/you/Pictures"]
compression = false
exclude = ["*.tmp", ".git", "node_modules"]

[local]
destination = "/mnt/backups"
exclude = [".tmp*"]

[[cloud_providers]]
provider = "google_drive"
enabled = false
# credentials_file = "/home/you/.barkup/google_drive.json"
# remote_folder = "Backups/Barkup"

• [general] sets defaults for sources, compression, and exclude.
• [local] and [[cloud_providers]] override those defaults; their exclude lists merge and deduplicate with the general list.
• compression is a placeholder for the upcoming ZIP feature.
• See config.example.toml in the repo for the full annotated example (including [advanced] temp_dir).

Commands

Global option: --config <PATH> (use a custom config file for any command).

Examples:

uv run barkup run --name default --yes
uv run barkup restore /mnt/backups/Documents/notes.txt --to ~/restore
uv run barkup restore --all --name default --to ~/restore-all
uv run barkup verify

How I use Barkup

I run Barkup unattended as a scheduled job (cron) rather than by hand. My setup:

1. barkup init to scaffold ~/.config/barkup/config.toml.
2. Point [general].sources at ~/Pictures and ~/Documents; set [local].destination to an external drive; enable the google_drive provider with a credentials file and a remote_folder.
3. Run it daily via cron with barkup run (the --yes flag is accepted for automation compatibility).

The config is the single source of truth, so adjust sources, destinations, and schedule to taste.

Contributing

• Requires Python 3.12+ and uv.

• Install dev dependencies and run tests:

  uv sync
  uv run pytest -v
  

• Lint/format: uv run ruff check . and uv run black --check ..

• Run the app during development: ./main.sh or uv run src/main.py.

• Workflow: feature branches are opened against dev; PR titles follow [Feature NN] - <summary> (see .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md). Keep changes focused and tests deterministic.

License

Released under the MIT License.