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heptapod

This is a command line application to manage and fine-tune Time Machine exclude paths.

Why it is named after creatures from Arrival? Heptapods are extraterrestrial species from the movie Arrival. They are special because they have non-linear time perspective. Their written language (Heptapod B) is basically describes the future and the past in the same time. Hence the name of the tool.

Install

brew tap tg44/heptapod
brew install heptapod

Usage

To print help;

heptapod -h
heptapod <action> -h

Move (and use) the default ruleset;

mkdir -p ~/.heptapod/rules
cp -R $(brew --prefix heptapod)/rules ~/.heptapod

Lists all the rules (you get 4 tables, enabled, disabled, parseable but unrunable and unparsable).

heptapod rules ls -a

Enable/disable rules (by name), or add/remove ignore folders;

heptapod rules disable node bower
heptapod rules enable bower
heptapod rules ignoreAdd ~/.Trash ~/.yarn/cache ~/Library
heptapod rules ignoreRemove ~/.Trash

List all the currently excluded TM paths;

heptapod tm ls

Dryrun the current rules, in verbose mode, also log speed and debug informations. (Potentially list nonexistent directories and files!)

heptapod -v 1 run -d

To run the current rules, and add the dirs to the TM exclude list. Also writes exclude logs to ~/.heptapod/logs (or the given --logDir dir) for easier revert.

heptapod run

To revert all the previously added paths from the run-exclude-logs. (prune -h could tell you the other useful revert options).

heptapod prune -a

Dictionary

  • path - a file or a folder
  • search path - a path that we want to process
  • ignore path - path that we don't process (further)
  • exclude path - path that we don't want in our TM saves
  • include path - path that we want in our TM saves
  • ignore rule - a rule that parse git/docker ignore file format

Notes from TM migrating to a new machine

When you try to migrate your TM state to a new machine xcode-select --install may be needed. Somehow this is sometimes not migrating as you thought it will.

Notes from TM in general

There are two ways to exclude a dir from backups;

  • exclude by path (tmutil addexclusion -p)
    • needs sudo
    • can be read back with defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist SkipPaths
    • appears in TM preferences / options
  • exclude by flag (tmutil addexclusion)
    • keeps the given flag when moved
    • can not be reliably list them (mdfind com_apple_backup_excludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd' is a close call, but some folders are excluded by mdfind too)

This tool excludes by flag! You can check any folder manually with tmutil isexcluded. If you delete a folder, it will be deleted with its flag. You don't need to clean up ever. Also, you can only exclude nonexcluded files with tmutil, so we only add them if they are exists and if they are not already added.

Rules

Every rule has a searchPaths, ignorePaths.

  • name for categorization
  • enabled for easier enable/disable
  • searchPaths are the root of the rule search like ~
  • ignorePaths are subpaths that we want to ignore to make the run quicker
    • like we want to parse dirs under ~, but not ~/Downloads
  • type is the ruletype
    • file-trigger
    • regexp
    • ignore-file
    • global
    • list
  • settings other type setting see below

Ignore file (not yet implemented)

Parses the .gitignore or .dockerignore files, and excludes its contents.

  • forceIncludePaths are files that we add even if they would be otherwise excluded
    • like .gitignore ignores .env files but we forcefully want to add them back
  • fileName
    • .gitignore or .dockerignore
  • devdocs:
    • the problem with this, that you need to go into the whole subtree to do the parsings

Regexp (not yet implemented)

Ignores all files/folders with the given regexp. This can be slow!

  • regexp

File trigger

Ignores files/dirs based on other files existence, made for easy language dep ignores.

  • fileTrigger like package.json or .git
  • excludePaths like node-modules or .

Global

Globally ignores or excludes path (overrides other rules walk ignores).

  • path the global path we want to evaluate (like ~/.npm)
  • handleWith a string enum
    • ignore - ignores globally
    • exclude - ignores globally and excludes from backups
    • any other value - do nothing

List

Can group multiple rules to a single file.

  • subRules the array of subRules (can be recursive with another list)

Notes;

  • while rules ls works, enable, disable and the path commands not working for the subrules, you need to edit the file manually
  • if the list is disabled, all of it subs are handled as disables
  • the group searchPaths and ignorePaths are currently do nothing
    • probably this will change for easier customisations

Credits

Contribution

If you are interested in this repo, star it, and write an issue, and we can talk about future ideas there!

Repo/developement state

done:

  • architecture the protocol/configs
  • most of asimov's features are ported
  • example rules added
  • command line interface
  • option to dryrun, show inner states, write to file
  • purge option
    • we should write down what paths excluded by us, and include them back
  • brew package
  • ghactions
  • rule manage commands (list/enable/disable/ignoreAdd/ignoreRemove)
  • global rule type
  • list rule type (for better rule grouping)

todos:

  • reorganise rules
  • fix the rule manage commands for lists
  • support tmignore functionality
  • support tmignore like funcionality with dockerignore
  • regexp pattern
  • hook to rerun periodically/before tmbackups
  • port asimov's issues (spotify, spotlight)
  • docker support (at least tell if docker vm is persisted or not)
    • this is kinda easy with tmutil.GetExcludeList()
  • android vms?
    • this should be also easy
  • preemptive search that tells you how many files with which size will be excluded/included
    • nice to have, we can tell the sizes, but counting files need to actually count the files which could be slow AH
  • speedtest it
  • modify the backup intervals and frequencies
    • not sure it can be done with tmutil, but there are applications for this
  • probably adding . and .. will break the execution shortcuts and need to fix them
  • wildcards like *.sh not working right now, do we want to make them work?