DAR  -  D i s k    A R c h i v e



PRESENTATION
================
Dar is a shell interface to the *libdar* library. This library
is provided here beside dar and can also be accessed through Web
interface (https://edrusb.github.io/webdar/) as well as desktop
applications and more as listed here:
http://dar.linux.free.fr/doc/presentation.html#external_tools


FEATURES
================
The libdar library features include *in particular*:
- *full*, *differential*, *incremental* and *decremental* backups
- *binary delta* (including recursive binary delta with incremental backups)
- directory tree *snapshots* (for later comparing or base of a diff backup)
- catalog *isolation* (small file containing the table of content of a backup)
  can be used as rescue in case of corruption or as reference for incrementa
  and differential backup in place of the backup itself
- selective *compression* (not compressing already compressed files)
- Strong *encryption* (symmetric and asymmetric keys supported)
- *multi-threading* support for compression and encryption
- *remote backup* storage (FTP and SFTP)
- backup *slicing* in several files a given size
- *hard-links* and any inode type backup and restoration
- *sparse file* handling
- *Extended Attributes* support (Linux ACL, MacOS file Forks...)
- Path based *filtering*
- Filename based filtering
- File-system based filtering
- Extended Attribute based filtering
- All filters are available at backup but also at restoration time
- *Cache Directory Tagging Standard* automatic directory exclusion
- backup *repairing* or catalog regeneration (for example in case of
  storage saturation during a backup operation)
- very *fast and efficient restoration* (even of a few files from a huge
  multi terabytes backup)
- *hooks for user scripts* to run at slice boundary and/or before and after
  backing up some given files and directories.
- *Database* to ease the restoration from a large amount of full,
  differential, incremental backups eventually using binary delta
- backup *merging* and *sub-setting* (without restoration to file-system)
for the main features...

On the command-line side, dar is the main command to handle 90% of
libdar features. But some features are better handled from separated
commands (though still relying on libdar):
Actually the Dar project include a set of six command-line programs beside the
libdar library:
        dar
        dar_xform
        dar_slave
        dar_manager
        dar_cp
        dar_split

with in addition:
        dar_static (statically linked version of dar, not all system
	            support static linking)
        dar_cp_static (statically linked version of dar_cp)


LICENSING
================
The whole Dar project, including thus the libdar library is licensed
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL in the following).
This means you can link libdar to your programs at the condition your
programs are also covered by the GPL, which says in particular that
you must provide source code of your programs. See COPYING file for details.


SUPPORTED OS
================
Dar and libdar are available under:
 - Linux (almost all distros do provide packages of dar and libdar)
 - Windows (95, 2000, NT, XP, 7, 8, 10...),
 - OpenSolaris,
 - FreeBSD
 - NetBSD,
 - Mac OS X,
 - Rasperry Pi
...for the known platform+OS it has been tested against or reported
to be working on.


DOCUMENTATION
==============
Documentation is embedded in the code and built during the compilation
 process, see doc/README. A built version is also available online at:
 http://dar.linux.free.fr/doc


INSTALLATION
==============
see INSTALL file