projectclone 🧬

Exact, reproducible, full-state project snapshots — including git, caches, env artifacts & symlinks

🚀 Overview

projectclone creates exact, faithful, self-contained snapshots of your project directory, including:

✔ Source code
✔ .git repo & history
✔ Virtualenvs & caches (unless excluded)
✔ File timestamps, metadata, symlinks
✔ Configs, logs, local DBs
✔ Environment-specific state

This enables true reproducibility and safe rollback points across environments and devices.

Why this tool?

For developers who need guaranteed restorable project states, across:

• Major refactors
• Release checkpoints
• Deployment backups
• Research environments
• Offline disaster recovery
• CI/CD artifact capture
• Termux/mobile development
• Reproducible experiments

Think:
git commit + tar + rsync --link-dest + atomic backup discipline
— in one tool.

🔗 Restore tool

For restoring projectclone backups, use its companion tool:

👉 projectrestore

This design keeps the backup tool safe, focused, and non-destructive — while giving the restore tool full security hardening and atomic restore semantics.

✨ Features

📦 Installation

🐍 Standard install

pip install projectclone

📱 Termux / Android

pkg install rsync proot-distro
pip install projectclone


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🔧 Usage Examples

Basic backup

projectclone backup_1k_tests

Creates:

/sdcard/project_backups/2025-02-03_172501-myproject-backup_1k_tests/


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Archive mode

projectclone release_v1 --archive

Produces:

release_v1.tar.gz
release_v1.tar.gz.sha256


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Incremental backup (deduplicated snapshots)

projectclone checkpoint --incremental


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Exclude files

projectclone nightly --exclude __pycache__ --exclude .mypy_cache


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Retain last 5 backups

projectclone stable --keep 5


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Dry-run safety preview

projectclone test --dry-run


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Full help

projectclone --help


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🛠 Options Summary

Flag	Meaning

--archive	Create .tar.gz archive
--incremental	Hard-linked incremental mode
--manifest	Size manifest
--manifest-sha	Per-file SHA-256 manifest
--exclude	Exclude patterns
--dest DIR	Custom destination
--dry-run	Preview, no writes
--symlinks	Preserve symlinks
--keep N	Keep only last N backups
--yes	Auto-confirm operations
--verbose	Debug logging



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🔐 Safety Guarantees

Atomic staging → atomic final move

Secure cleanup on failure

Cross-device move fallback

Drops setuid/setgid bits

Tight log permissions (chmod 600 where supported)

Non-destructive: never overwrites directories



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📁 Default Paths

Platform	Location

Linux	~/project_backups
Termux	/sdcard/project_backups



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🧪 Development

pip install -e .[dev]
pytest -v


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📜 License

MIT — open source & production-friendly.


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🤝 Contributing

Ideas & PRs welcome — especially around:

Compression tuning (zstd / lz4)

Remote sync (SSH / S3 / GDrive)

Fuse mounts / stream extraction

Config file support



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⭐ Support

If this tool protects your work, please ⭐️ the repo — your support drives development.

git clone https://github.com/dhruv13x/projectclone


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🧠 Author

Dhruv13x
Mobile-first DevOps explorer | Rust & Python | Cloud | Termux power-user


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🧩 Roadmap

.projectcloneignore

zstd / lz4 compression

Remote targets (SSH / S3 / GDrive)

Encrypted archives

GUI wrapper (Android & Desktop)


> Restore is intentionally delegated to
projectrestore → secure, atomic, rollback-safe recovery




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💬 Final Word

> Code evolves — backups must keep up.
Restore safely — with tools designed for it.



With projectclone, every project state becomes portable, reproducible, and future-proof.

Clone. Freeze. Protect. Restore via projectrestore.


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