Progress indicator

[enboig]

Could there be a "progress indicator" when backing up? I don't hope it to be exact, but knowing if backup would take 1 hour or 1 day could help to identify if I forgot to ignore a cache/temp folder.

[m3nu]

This needs one extra run to determine the "total" of the work first. So most backup tools make it optional or skip it. Since the cost can be pretty large. If few files are changed it's basically 2x.

[enboig]

I thought while files are processed and upload, a thread is checking which ones should be queued to process and which ones are already in upload.

Check should be faster than upload (at least in my exprience), so there should be a point where you know which files/size need to be processed, how much have you done, and how long did it take.

[m3nu]

For most run, the local filecache will skip unchanged files. This is very fast and about the same as getting an estimate for a progress indicator.

If there is lots of data to upload (which is the case you're thinking of) the extra walk would have less impact. So it's 2x the work at worst, but less with many new files.

[goebbe]

If a progress indicator is actually useful depends on the use case:
a) with a lot of new data in the backup, the upload time dominates the total backup time.
b) for repeated backups with little new data, the time to compute the changes might outweigh the time to upload.

In the first case, a progress indicator could be really helpful.
E.g. the first upload of a new source/ paths might take many hours - and it is really hard for a user to get an idea for the expected backup time or remaining backup time. (which is largely determined by the amount/ type of data and the upload rate)