Domain attic-backup.org expired, pending delete

[jniggemann]

Name: attic-backup.org
Registry Domain ID: D171289523-LROR
Domain Status: pendingDelete, serverHold, redemptionPeriod
Registry Expiration: 2021-03-04 11:51:14 UTC

[adept]

attic is dead, long live borg?

[jniggemann]

Indeed :-)

[fhavrlent]

I found attic in some blog post, got linked to the website... I was wondering what is going on 😃

[jgrisham]

For the information of future travelers stumbling here:

• The owner of this project is on a multi-year sabbatical (due to discovering that time with family and children is awesome yet also a time-suck).

---

What I've learned in the past hour*

(* likely to be quite incomplete)

Last archived version of attic-backup.org

• attic-backup.org (via Internet Archive, 2021-03-02)
  • Earlier snapshot (same content) that won't erroneously link to new, unrelated site archives

Forks:

• This project was (manually?) forked several years ago to borgbackup/borg (documentation site).
  • It can import existing jborg/attic backup repositories.
    • (which will then no longer backwards compatible)
  • borgbackup appears to be under active development with a community, as of early 2022.
• @AaronWebster mentioned a few months back (in Migrate to jmfernandez/attic or AaronWebster/attic? #403) that he was interested in maintaining a direct and compatible fork of attic.
  • AaronWebster/attic has recent commits but does not currently appear to have GitHub issue reporting enabled.
  • AaronWebster/attic is the most recently-updated direct fork as of February 2022

Similar (but independently-inspired) projects:

• bup/bup
  • Under active development, with a mailing list and IRC channel.
  • Based on git packfile format
  • Exists in several package managers.
  • (see also related tools, e.g. anarcat/bup-cron)
• ?

---

Tl;dr:

1. If you wish to stay compatible with the attic format,
   • AaronWebster/attic appears to be the only active direct fork as of February 2022
2. If you don't have legacy needs,
   • bup and borgbackup both have 'watching' and 'fork' numbers of the same order of magnitude.
     • (I have no idea which is more popular/in greater use, more stable, more efficient, etc.)
   • There may be better alternatives elsewhere, or perhaps there are not. :)

---

P.S. Sincere and hearty thanks to Jonas (aka @jborg) for both the initial creation of attic and for sharing it with the world.

• It appears to have had quite a broad impact (to end users and to other developers) and for (inadvertantly?) helping to advance both the popularity and the state of the art in open-source deduplicated backup tools!

[AaronWebster]

I enabled issue reporting and am happy to review/manage PRs going forward as this is something I actively use.