Backup Tool for Unity non-Pro, Areca Backup For Mac

I found this nifty tool called Areca Backup that does differential/incremental backups. I haven't used it extensively yet, but I'm hoping it plays nicer with Unity non-Pro than SVN does. It doesn't keep metadata on each folder like SVN, so it won't mess up if Unity messes with the file organization.

But because of that, it can't track changes between file moves. It can't even track changes anymore if you rename the file. But the old unrenamed file is still there in the old backup entries, so if you need to get back to it you can do so.

This is slightly better than the manual method of zipping up your project everytime you want a new backup. A version control system is the most ideal but we all know its not possible with Untiy non-Pro.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/areca/

I did some few fixes to have it running on Macs: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/Areca/Areca-7.2.3.dmg

Its not perfect, it may hang when you try to exit it. But I've tested it and backing up does work properly.


At first, the backing up didn't work. It turns out the exceptions stem from the fact that Mac and Linux have different ways of showing the output of ls.

In DefaultMetaDataAccessor.java, ls -ald1 seems to print the file without any info (filenames only). I had to change it to ls -ald. Furthermore, Mac's ls prints out a file size total as its first output, so I needed to skip that if found.

There are further problems with the way the output of ls is handled. Mac's ls puts an @ sign when the file has extended attributes (ACL, etc.) and that needed to be taken into account.

Currently the program may hang when you unselect an entry at the leftmost list.

I get this:

java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.composites.TargetTreeComposite.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:820)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:796)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.MainWindow.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Application.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.launchImpl(Unknown Source)
 at com.myJava.system.AbstractLauncher.launch(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.main(Unknown Source)
11-12-20 22:09 - ERROR
java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.composites.TargetTreeComposite.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:820)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:796)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.MainWindow.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Application.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.launchImpl(Unknown Source)
 at com.myJava.system.AbstractLauncher.launch(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.main(Unknown Source)

Source code: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/Areca/areca-7.2.3-mac-src.zip