Hi there,
[BackupPC maintainer hat on.]
On Thu, 1 Oct 2026, Robert Howard wrote:
The latest tag in Github for BackupPC? is 4.4.1rc1 and this tag is 11
months old. There have been a number of code changes since then. When
will a more recent tag be created? Is there an estimate of when will the
BackupPC? 4.4.1 general release will occur? Also when will the ancillary
programs updates be completed?
The reason I ask this is the Linux distributions I use will not package
and ship release candidates.
Understood that distros aren't keen on packaging RCs, and understood
also that installing from upstream when you've been using a package is
a nuisance at best; at worst it can be challenging. But it is there
as an option, and this list has quite a few experienced people which
can help you through it.
The sudden bursting on the scene of Claude, Mythos et. al. has caught
almost everyone on the hop. I admit that I didn't see it happening so
suddenly and I guess neither did most of the rsync developers. Most
of my time this year has been invested in working on rsync-bpc so that
it embodies the vulnerability fixes and hardening in the rsync code on
which it is based at least as far as is necessary for use by BackupPC.
That has meant that picking up where I left off with BackupPC 4.4.1rc1
has had to go on the back burner for longer than I'm happy about, but
there has really been no choice as rsync-bpc is pretty fundamental to
a large number of BackupPC users. Originally I planned to bring out
rsync-bpc 3.4.something, but trying to separate out fixes from feature
creep in rsync updates became impractical, and in the end I decided to
bite the bullet and go direct to rsync-bpc V 3.5.0.0. Fortunately I'm
seeing light at the end of what has been a longer tunnel than expected
and I'm now running, more or less, what I plan to call version 3.5.0.0
of rsync-bpc on my own network. If all goes well I'll be sending out
a tarball for testing this weekend. Anyone who is interested in doing
some testing with it is very welcome to ask for it.
Assuming there are no show-stoppers in rsync-bpc I'll get back to work
on the release of 4.4.1, which will be very little different from the
current master on Github. If there's great demand I could simply tag
the existing rc1 as 4.4.1 right now, and the few remaning changes I'd
like to do can go into a 4.4.2 release. To me it's always seemed that
frequent releases aren't necessarily a sign of stable software (and if
you want stability anywhere, I think it's in your backup software) but
if there are any looming distro deadlines please let me know. I make
no attempt to keep a diary of them. The guy at Red Hat has been very
helpful but there's been no response to my mail to Debian maintainers.
Regarding the ancillaries, we should probably define what they are.
Things like the zlib and popt libraries could come under that heading
but I'm working on eliminating the versions that used to be bundled
with BackupPC. BackupPC-XS no longer bundles them, rsync still does
but rsync-bpc does not. That means that security issues in bundled
code will no longer be a problem but it does mean that you will need
to install the libraries if you don't have them, and the development
libraries (C header files) too if you're going to build from source.
The distro packagers should handle all of that for you of course.
Apart from smbclient, the main other ancillaries that I can think of
are things like Apache and of course tar, gzip and Cygwin which are
all more or less out of my hands. My original plan for this year -
which I had to drop because of the AI juggernaut - was to look at how
BackupPC uses smbclient (specifically how it parses smbclient output)
and maybe to get in touch with the people Down Under with a view to
collaborating on producing a machine-readable version of said output
which won't break use by BackupPC every time they add another stat.
Looking at the enormous number of rsync commits this year I'm not sure
that our Aussie friends would have welcomed the approach, but I still
want to sound them out. That's looking more like work for next year,
but if anyone is pitting their wits against SMB transfers please pipe
up here on the list; I want to know about it and I'm up for the job.
Anything I missed? Well, apart from that Perlephant in the room...
--
73,
Ged.
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