Tarsnap GUI version 0.6 released

[Shinnok <admin@shinnok.com>]

Hello again Tarsnap users,

As promised in an earlier e-mail, Tarsnap GUI version 0.6 is out:

https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap-gui/releases/tag/v0.6

I won't reproduce the verbatim Changelog here, but I do encourage you to go over it to get an idea of why you should update to this version:
https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap-gui/blob/v0.6/CHANGELOG

In short, this release harnesses the feedback received following the previous release, adds a handful of new features as well as smaller overall improvements and fixes.

I'd like to get some attention and discussion towards a couple outstanding topics next.

1. First and foremost, the caveat. This release updates the Sqlite DB schema, as likely all future releases will until we reach some degree of feature completeness, and currently there is no code to update an existing DB instance to a new schema version. Therefore the v0.6 update won't play ball with the v0.5 version DB. Resolving this is a top priority for the next release. So in order to update to 0.6, which I strongly encourage you to do for many reasons listed here and in the Changelog, you have these options:
    a) Reset the app state via the "Settings -> Run Setup Wizard" before or after installing the new version;
    b) Just delete the Sqlite tarsnap.db file before running the new version. The db file is located in the same directory(system user app data) as the default generated key path. You can easily find it out by looking at the Help -> Console log output.
    Either of these actions will have the effect of FORGETTING ALL of your DEFINED JOBS (tarsnap archives aren't touched of course). In the hope that you haven't had the chance to create dozens of jobs yet, it should be easy to recreate from memory or otherwise, just make sure you reproduce the job names verbatim and upon an Archive pane refresh Tarsnap will reassign the existing archives with the 'Job_' prefix to the newly created jobs based on the job name.
    If by any chance you're already a heavy user with dozens of jobs defined ( kudos to you then :-) ), maybe it would be more comfortable for you to just wait for the next release. My apologies again for any inconvenience this might incur to any of you.

2. There's now a method for queueing automatic job backups via the --jobs. This is controlled by the "Include in scheduled backups" job option. Each job that has that option checked, will be backed up, in sequential order, upon execution of the application from the command line with the --jobs option. No UI is displayed for this. So queueing automatic job backups could be as simple as creating a cron task executing "/path/to/tarsnap-gui -j" at your own time intervals or cadence of course. Cron is just an example, you can use whatever platform or otherwise scheduler you like. More details into this have been outlined in my previous e-mail to the list. http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg01134.html

3. There's now both -h and -v arguments that could be used for integration into the Homebrew repository, Dave, can you please resubmit the recipe for inclusion? Let me know how it goes.

4. You can now cancel executing Tarsnap tasks by clicking on the rotating busy icon in the bottom right corner. Does any of you think it would be useful to also be able to clear the queued tasks too?

5. The file picker tree view now supports tristate checkboxes. It should be easier for you now to inspect defined Job file selections or make more complex ones without losing track of things. Detailed explanation here https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap-gui/wiki/Ideas.

I hope this release is enticing enough for you to try it out. Please remember that the app is still considered beta, until otherwise announced. I encourage you to play with it and provide feedback be it either good or bad. I'm also welcome to new ideas or tarsnap options coverage requests.

Looking forward, for version 0.7 I plan to work on:

* The DB update mechanism mentioned above;
* Grab some basic account info from the Tarsnap website and display in Settings - Account;
* Maybe the persistent journal log? Should it include all operations or just backup operations? This is relevant for jobs backed up via -j too.
* Smaller additions like a setting to ignore system and/or dot files;
* Better tarsnap client error handling and recovery;

Best of luck,
Shinnok