engram

Engram is a fast and robust version control system for portable file backups, inspired by git and rsnapshot. It creates snapshots of directories and stores them in an efficient and portable delta-based format.

Engram can be used in a cron job to automatically backup files, and the backup can be stored remotely with a tool like rclone. It does not encrypt snapshots, so this should be handled externally if desired.

Unlike other backup tools, engram allows for deletion of any number of previous revisions, as it stores instructions on how to create previous snapshots given the current state.

Usage

:information: See engram --help for more detailed information.

Initialize a repository with data:
$ engram init ~/repo ~/data

Update a repository with new data:
$ engram update ~/repo ~/data 3days

Pull historical repository data:
$ engram pull ~/repo ~/out 2024-11-28T12:00:00

Revert updates to a repository:
$ engram revert ~/repo 2024-11-28T12:00:00

Manually remove old updates:
$ engram clean ~/repo 3days

Current Limitations

• renamed directories can create big index files
• cannot pull files bigger than available system memory
• will not preserve file metadata
• only supports a UNIX-based OS