[Discuss] rsnapshot vs. rdiff-backup

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Mike Small
> 
> Does btrfs fit in here somewhere?

Yes.  When you create a btrfs or zfs snapshot, and send incremental to the destination system, that is perfectly analogous to rsnapshot sending the incremental, except that btrfs and zfs will be much more efficient in terms of time & space.

Since rsnapshot is linux/unix only (requires hard links on destination) it will eventually suffer a large percentage obsolescence by btrfs.  But for now, btrfs isn't commonly enough deployed, commonly enough supported...  So rsnapshot still has its place.

rdiff-backup has a niche in cross-platform compatibility.  It makes an effort to understand and intelligently translate the various implementation details between different systems.  For example, different supported character sets supported by EXT and NTFS, for example, a different concept of permission bits and ACL's on different platforms.

That being said, I'm officially the rdiff-backup maintainer, and I'm not doing much maintenance.  With the introduction of so many new different filesystems and different features and concepts on each one, it becomes difficult to support interchangeability between all of them.  I'm not saying it can't be done; I'm only saying it's work intensive.