vykar-gui 0.13 "Full backup" button - on more views?

[goebbe]

I am just testing vykar 0.13.0.
I took a moment to adapt, but generally this is a nice gui. The new Overview is nice! 👍

This is a feature request about one thing I really miss with the new GUI (as compared to the old GUI):

• I wish the old "Full backup" button would be universally available.

Examples:

• I edit the config in the "advanced" view - and want to run a full backup to check.
• I discover a problem in the "logs" view - and want to make a full backup, to see it the problem can be reproduced.
• Looking at the "snapshot" view, I realize that I should do a full manual backup.
• Some setting / hooks apply to all repositories, a full backup is the way to test new settings.

In all these cases it is just annoying that one has to go to the corresponding "repositories" view just to trigger a backup - and go back to check or make changes. And If I want to get a backup to all repos, now one has to go to "sources" - but then it is backups only (no prune/ compact/ check).

I liked the old "Full backup", since it did a backup / prune / compact/ check in one go, for all repos - which turned out to be a really convenient feature.

[m3nu]

OK. Let me see where it fits.

[goebbe]

Just an idea: which could also unify the appearance of the different "views".
Perhaps structure all "views", similar to the Repository Overview (right hand side)?
I.e. put a large row (a bar) to the top of each view.

This "Top bar" could always contain useful information on the left side and useful buttons on the right side.

[m3nu]

Yeah, that's reasonable and already somewhat there for Snapshots. The 'useful information' would be the title + explainer text maybe? I wouldn't put large boxes at the top like in Overview.

[goebbe]

Yes, no boxes.
The "title", on the left could always use a larger font size, and the buttons would be all buttons that could be useful in this view, e.g. "Full update" or "Edit sources"...
In the Advanced view, perhaps even the "save and apply" button could be moved to the top. And since there is already a "reload" button at the top, the "discard" button on the bottom is redundant, I guess. Since users could just "reload" instead of "save and apply" to discard changes?

[m3nu]

Yeah, let's do that!

[m3nu]

Implemented in commit 15c7f91.

Summary:

• Added clearer page/window titles and simple headers across the GUI views.
• Kept the full backup cycle in the tray, renamed to “Full Backup Cycle”.
• Kept repo/source actions local and short: “Run Backup”.
• Removed the Overview mount button, removed backup buttons from Snapshots and Find Files, made Prune/Search primary where appropriate.
• Moved Advanced Config actions into the header area.

Verification: commit hook passed fmt, clippy, and doc warnings; targeted cargo check -p vykar-gui passed. A prior full make pre-commit run reached storage backend tests and then hit sandbox Operation not permitted while local HTTP/S3 test servers were starting.

[goebbe]

Great! Thanks for implementing this.
As usual, I will test, using the next build - and report here.

[goebbe]

Testing vykar 0.14.0 on Linux Mint.
This is certainly a much nicer GUI! 👍

I am a bit puzzled, since I cannot find any "full backup" button in my GUI.

First I thought that the "Save and Apply" button in the Advanced view would be a "Full backup" button - but this button does not even run a backup, for me. What does "apply" actually mean, here?

I see "Run Backup" in Repositories > Overview.
I see "Run Backup" in the Sources
As their name suggests both run a backup only (no prune, no compact, no check)

Somehow I would have expected to see "Full backup" buttons permanently in

• the Log view in order to check if everything works as expected.
  and in
• the Sources view in order to run the full backup > prune > compact > check cycle, for all available sources.
  and in
• the Advanced view in order to apply / test the changes immediately after saving them.

[m3nu]

Full Backup Cycle is in the system tray. I didn't find a good place in the GUI for it. Maybe in the Overview page? But tray also seems like a good fit.

[goebbe]

I guess I just got used to the old GUI interface, where the "Full backup" button was always available. For me this was one of the defining features of the old vykar-gui. And I thought this was a great idea/ feature. Why should I push four different buttons, when I get everything in one go?
Probably I was overusing this button, during the testing period and I really grow on me. 😄

I really miss this "Full backup" for the

1. Log view
   and the
2. Advanced view
   and it could be useful in the
3. Sources view - e.g. if a user has many different sources (which is not the case for me)

For me having the Full Backup available everywhere, just proved to be very useful when doing the setup / testing.
Also when I attach my USB-drive, once every month, it is just a full backup that I want to execute.

For the best place: In the top row, the "Full backup" could be on the right side of the other buttons.

Moreover, with 0.14.0, i.e. without the "Full backup", there is no way to trigger "compact" or "check" from the GUI.

It is great to have the full backup in the tray - it can just stay there. But to me, it feels really a bit odd to not have this possibility in the main Window of vykar-gui.
The tray seems to be an odd place, if it's the only place to get the full backup. Also, the workflow is somewhat off, since you have to move your cursor out of the window, need a right click, have to choose a small text item.
However, the tray really is great if you have e.g. finished an important milestone - and you just want a full backup quickly without opening the vykar-gui.

I also remember that, gnome removed "legacy tray" icons, some years ago. I don't use Gnome, but the tray might not even be available by default in Gnome.

Anyway - I understand that designing a GUI has many tradeoffs - In the end vykar should aim for good usability.

[m3nu]

My thinking on moving the full backup cycle button into the system tray only is that it's relatively slow. If you just want to test that the repository works, then the normal backup will do the same.

The missing compact and check options are a valid concern. I think we should look into this a little bit more.

If we move the full backup cycle back into the main window, I think it should be on the Overview page. The other pages mostly have actions related to them. For example, Snapshots is for pruning.

[goebbe]

Sure, my backup is relatively small: 50.000 files 16 GB of data. Doing a full backup to my local NAS, using the sftp-backup, takes only 10 seconds. So doing just a backup will save me about 2 seconds - which is not worth any effort.

Moreover, the use cases, I had in mind were:

• first setup,
• mess with the configs (excludes and hooks, anybody?),
• testing, testing, testing
  These are all uses cases where, now, you have to switch back and forward between the different "views".
  It is slightly annoying to switch views and having to think about where you can find which buttons, and where you can best monitor, what's going on/wrong.

If you have large TB backups with billions of files, you probably want to have tight control about when Vykar does backup/ prune/ compact/ check. In such a case, a Full backup might just take to long to be of practical use.