Simple Backup Go

A simple command-line backup tool written in Go, for my personal needs. I used to write CMD files that compress many folders with 7zip (with sub-folders filters, password protection...), and I wanted to move all this stuff to a single JSON file.
This program takes some command-line parameters and a JSON config file, and generates archive files in desired folder.

7zip (7z.exe) should be in PATH. Tested on Windows 10 x64 with 7zip 22.01, and compiled with Go 1.19.

Build

Simply run go build or make build and see generated executable.

Usage

The program takes command-line parameters:

Command	Description	Default	Required
targetFolder	where the backups are located		yes
configFile	the location of the JSON config file		yes
logsFolder	where the logs are saved (will save no logs if not specified)		no
dryRun	don't run the backup tasks, and show what the 7zip commands would be instead	false	no
password	password used to protect backups, if password required by JSON config		if protect-with-password is set to true in JSON config
taskNamesToExecute	backup tasks filter: use it to execute only given backup tasks (see example below)		no

A JSON config file describes one or many backup tasks. See the sample backup.json file. Every backup task is described by some fields:

Field	Description	Default	Required
task-name	a name for the backup task		yes
source	the folder to back up		yes
protect-with-password	protect the generated archive file with the password provided by the command line	false	no
excludes	a list of sub-folders to exclude from the backup	[]	no

Examples:

# execute the backup tasks defined by backup-config.json
simple-backup-go.exe -password=foo -targetFolder=D:\data\my_backups -configFile=C:\Users\jonathan\backup-config.json

# execute only the "Foobar2000 playlists" and "Stardew Valley profile and saves" backup tasks
simple-backup-go.exe -password=foo -targetFolder=D:\data\my_backups -configFile=C:\Users\jonathan\backup-config.json -taskNamesToExecute="Foobar2000 playlists,Stardew Valley profile and saves"

It will generate 7zip archive files in the target folder. Archive files look like this: the_source_folder_path YYYYMMDD hhmmss.7z, pex example C_Projects 20220819 201536.7z.
Compression is set to Fast (-mx3 7zip parameter) and it should compress files open for writing (-ssw 7zip parameter).

Tip: you may want to start the program in a new tab on Windows Terminal (wt) instead of the classical CMD console (which doesn't render emojis correctly). Please use a command like this: wt -w 0 nt C:\theAbsolutePathOf\simple-backup-go.exe ...arguments..., otherwise you may see an error when Windows Terminal is already opened. See the Windows Terminal documentation.

To-Do

• run backup tasks in parallel (make it configurable?)
• move Go files to a folder like src/main and update the build command (I'm very new to Go programming...😅)

License

MIT License. In other words, you can do what you want: this project is entirely OpenSource, Free and Gratis.