News
6 April 2008:
DarGUI
0.3.0
released. This release provides a number of improvements
to the user interface
9 March 2008:
DarGUI
0.2.0
released. The second
release of DarGUI is now available.
14 Feb 2008:
DarGUI
0.1.0
released. The initial
release of DarGUI is now available for download.
Introduction
DarGUI
is a graphical frontend for the Disk ARchiving utility (DAR) that aims
to make it easier and quicker to perform common backup tasks using DAR.
It uses the GTK+ library, which is installed on most Linux
distributions, so usually the only additional dependency is
DAR.
DarGUI
aims to complement and enhance the command line features of DAR rather
than conceal them, and to help users to learn how DAR works so that
they can use it from the command line when necessary. It is written in
Pascal using FreePascal and the Lazarus IDE.
About DAR archives
Dar is a
versatile format intended primarily for creating backup archives which
can be stored on removable media of any number and
size. A single DAR archive can be saved in separate files (called slices) on an
appropriate number of floppy disks,
CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Zip, flash memory sticks, etc., whatever is
most convenient.
Dar offers a string of features for managing backup
archives, including the ability to compare archived files with those
currently on the filesystem and to make differential backups. Archive
catalogues can be extracted and retained on the system for
reference. For a full list of the features offered by Dar
see Dar's
Features. Dar's author, Denis Corbin, has provided
excellent and detailed documentation
which is essential reading for anyone using DarGUI.
About DarGUI
The Dar
command line utility offers an immense number of features for creating,
restoring and manipulating backup archives. Johnathan K.
Burchill's KDar
provides an extremely flexible GUI for Dar but development appears to
have stopped in March 2006. Compiling with recent releases of KDE
presents problems and KDar packages are no longer available for many
recent Linux distributions.
DarGUI was conceived as an attempt to provide a substitute
for KDar for users who simply want an easy way of accessing
the most common and widely-used functions of Dar. Unlike KDar, which
by-passes Dar to access the libdar libraries directly, DarGUI is simply
a means of compiling a Dar command which is executed in a console. It
does as little as possible to hide the Dar command line from the user,
because for more complex operations knowledge of the Dar commandline is
essential.
Features
The default
language used by DarGUI is English but it also ships with a
localisation file in the Spanish language. At present DarGUI provides
the following features:
- view the contents of DAR archives
- select files from an archive for extraction using filemasks
- view archive statistics (number of files, compression
information, etc)
- extract/ restore selected or all files from an archive
- create new archives using a limited range of options which
include a specified slice size, compression, file and directory filters
- isolate archive catalogues
- compare files in an archive with those in the filesystem
In addition, the following features are planned:
- test archive for integrity
- search for files or folders within archives
If there are any other features which you feel should be
included or you have any suggestions for implementing the present ones
differently, please let me know either by submitting a feature
request or by email.
Bugs
Please report any bugs that you find, ether by using the
SourceForge Bug
Tracker or by email to mgpoole@users.sourceforge.net