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jensstein / oandbackup

backup manager for android
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Direction of development #223

Open McNetic opened 5 years ago

McNetic commented 5 years ago

I know this is not really an issue, but I found no other way to contact you. I'd like to extend the idea of android backup to be able to directly backup to a cloud storage (in my case, my own owncloud/nextcloud instance to retain complete control over my data), with the prospect of being able to keep a history of backups and be able to restore to different previous backup states, and eventually also to keep track of the apps installed on different devices. Is that a prospect you could imagine to incorporate into oandbackup, so we could combine efforts?

jensstein commented 5 years ago

thanks for you interest in oab! this is a good place to discuss your suggestion i think. it's a feature which has been requested several times but i've never had time to work on it so i'll appreciate it very much if you would like to begin implementing it. your contributions would be very welcome :)

maybe you could give some details on how you imagine you would do it? when you say directly to cloud storage, are you thinking that the backed-up files on the device only live in temporary storage until they're uploaded or would the cloud upload be a separate step after the backup is done in the normal way? and is backup history something the cloud storage controller provides with oab being able to query for different backup states there or is it something which oab handles on the device? (i have started work implementing backup history on-device some time ago but i stalled when i didn't have time to finish it)

McNetic commented 5 years ago

Well, I didn't think this through in all directions.

The cloud-only vs. local + cloud could be made a configurable option. I think there will still be situations where local storage is scarce and only having a cloud backup would be a plus.

Regarding the history: If we want to support more than one cloud storage provider eventually, maybe it would be best if oab would handle the state by itself. Especially, when additional state beyound simply having different versions comes into play. (My ideal would be that oab stores the list of currently installed applications of all of my devices in the cloud, so when a device gets broken or is reinstalled or I move to a new device, I can simply restore with one click without manually selecting which apps and without getting all apps I ever backed up on any of my devices).

Also, as with everyone, my time is limited, so I can not make any guarantees when I can work on this.

PS: Is your work on backup history available in the repo, or could you perhaps upload a branch with it?

jensstein commented 5 years ago

in that scenario the backup speed is effectively capped by the data connection of the device. i wonder if many users would be interested in that.

the thing about oab being able to fetch data to restore from a cloud provider sounds good. such info could simply be stored in a database.

no, i never got it into a working state as far as i remember. i would probably redo it completely the next time.