🗂️ partial-backup: Metadata-Aware Partial Backup Creator

This utility scans a given directory in a structured "unbacked" format and generates a Backup object that can be written back as a valid backup. It preserves directory and file metadata such as ownership (user_), group (group_), and file mode (mode_), and skips common junk files.

📦 Features

• Recursively scans a directory organized by domain (e.g., HomeDomain)
• Supports embedded metadata in directory names (user_501_group_0_mode_755)
• Preserves and serializes:
  • File contents
  • Directory structure
  • Ownership and permissions
• Skips system-specific noise like .DS_Store and Thumbs.db
• Outputs a fully reconstructable Backup object
• Simple CLI using Typer

🛠️ Installation

pip install partial-backup

🧪 Example Usage

Assume your source directory is structured like this:

unback/HomeDomain/
├── user_501_group_0_mode_777/Library
│   └── Preferences/
│       └── com.example.settings.plist

To generate the backup:

partial-backup unback/ output/

It will:

• Detect HomeDomain
• Extract user/group/mode from directories like user_501_group_0_mode_777
• Generate a Backup object
• Save the reconstructed backup to output/

♻️ Restore the Backup

The generated backup is compatible with pymobiledevice3, and can be restored to an iOS device using:

pymobiledevice3 backup2 restore /path/to/backup --source . --no-copy --system

📁 Metadata Syntax

This tool supports optional metadata hints in folder names:

These metadata markers are automatically removed from paths and applied to the appropriate file or directory entry.

⛔ Ignored Files

The following files and folders are skipped automatically:

• .DS_Store
• Thumbs.db
• desktop.ini
• .Spotlight-V100
• .Trashes

API Overview

from pathlib import Path
from partial_backup.backup import Backup

backup = Backup.create_backup_from_directory(Path('/path/to/unback'))
backup.write_to_directory(Path('/path/to/output'))

🙏 Acknowledgments

Huge thanks to @JJTech0130 for his insights and foundational work on the backup DB implementation.