Restic-Qt

Restic-Qt is a Python 3 based graphical frontend for the backup tool Restic as its name implies it is using the Qt5 Framework. Currently it works only on Linux.

Motivation

I think Restic is a great backup tool which should be available to many more users. Since command line tools can be a bit scary for less experienced users I decided to write a GUI as my “thesis” during my final semester at the IBZ school in Aarau, Switzerland.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine.

Prerequisites

You need to have Restic installed in order to have Restic-Qt working. You can get a binary for your operating system here: https://github.com/restic/restic/releases

On a Debian based system you can install it by copying to ~/.local/bin/. Restic needs to be able to get executed by calling the command restic.

cp ~/Downloads/restic-linux64 ~/.local/bin/restic
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/restic

For other systems check their documenation.

Installing

1. Installing Restic-Qt is very simple. Download the binary for your operating system here: https://github.com/resticqt/restic-qt/releases or install it with pip:

pip3 install restic-qt

2. Copy the config file from docs/restic_qt.conf.example to ~/.config/restic_qt/restic_qt.conf and edit it to contain a valid path to your Restic repository and the password. Put all your changes into the [resticqt] section. As of now there is no automated way to setup Restic-Qt.

3. Run the binary by double clicking on it or by copying it to ~/.local/bin/ like Restic. If you do that you might want to create a desktop file for it. Puth the following code into a restic-qt.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Restic-Qt
Exec=/home/username/.local/bin/restic-qt
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Tools
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;

Make sure the file is executable:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/restic-qt.desktop

Now you should find Restic-Qt in your desktop’s start menu.

If you installed Restic-Qt with pip you can either run restic_qt from the command line or edit the desktop file to exec restic_qt instead of the full path.

Development

To start working on Restic-Qt first clone the git repository and install Restic as described in [Prerequisites].

git clone https://github.com/restic-qt/restic-qt.git

Now create a virtual environment.

cd restic-qt
python3 -m venv venv

And activate it.

source venv/bin/activate

Finally you can install Restic-Qt and it’s dependencies.

pip3 install -e .

You’re now all set to work on Restic-Qt. It’s a good idea to run the tests before starting. You can do this with the following command from the root of the repository.

make test

To make testing the application while programming a bit easier there’s a script which reloads the application everytime a file changes in the restic_qt directory. You to use it run the following command from the root of the repository.

./scripts/debugging.sh

ToDos

To have a look at all the planned tasks you can have a look at the planned features here: todos.md

Used packages

• PyQt5 - the GUI framework
• PyInstaller - used for creating the binary
• pytest - used for testing
• pytest-cov - used for coverage analysis

Contributing

Everyone is welcome to submit pull requests and reports issues. Please follow PEP8 and remove unnecessary white space when you contribute code. And most importantly make sure that you don’t break any tests and if possible write tests for your code.

Versioning

Currently there is no versioning as such. In the future a versioning scheme based on semantic versioning might get used. The master branch is considered to be the stable branch. Other branches might be highly experimental.

Authors

• Andreas Zweili - Initial work - Nebucatnetzer

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3 License - see the file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to PurpleBooth for her README template.
• Thanks to Back in Time for the inspiration.
• Thanks to Feather Icons for their great icon set.
• Thanks to Kenneth Reitz for the example repo for setup.py