0 years ago today the first version of raspiBackup was stored in my local cvs.

revision 1.1
date: 2013-08-07 21:28:14 +0200; author: framp; state: Exp; commitid: 10052029FC71A98602F;
Initial version
=============================================================================

This cvs unfortunately no longer exists because it would be interesting to see how the script has changed over the 10 years. Initially there were about 50 lines of code.

My son gave me a Raspberry for Christmas 2013. I started working with it enthusiastically and quickly added a second Raspberry, which was then also used in production. As SD cards unfortunately only have a limited shelf life, raspiBackup was born. At first it was only used privately - but after it was doing its job very well, it was made available to the community. I had underestimated the amount of work involved: there is a difference between writing and using a small script yourself and having it used by other users. A lot of tests for incorrect inputs and system environments had to be added. Corresponding error messages also had to be written. Since the error messages are only short, various websites were created in parallel on which the functionalities of raspiBackup are described as well as more detailed descriptions of the error messages and how the error messages can be eliminated.

The installer was then created to simplify the initial installation. Soon friends of raspiBackup helped to add language support for Finnish, Chinese and French in addition to German and English.

There was a lot of feedback and suggestions from raspiBackup users on what would be useful features in raspiBackup. Without these suggestions from raspiBackup users, raspiBackup would still have the initial function I need @home. There were and are many helpers. Initially I had a website where all the helpers were listed. At some point it just became too much and I took the website off the net.

Thanks to this help, raspiBackup has continued to develop its range of functions over the 10 years. At first, all feedback came via the comment function on this website. However, this proved to be very cumbersome and eventually the cvs code was moved to github. This made it much easier to create feature requests. In addition, reporting bugs and questions about raspiBackup usage has been much easier since then.

I then registered relatively quickly in the German Raspberry forum. The members there helped me a lot to get to know and use my Raspberry. At some point I asked if it wouldn't make sense to create a backup subforum, which was done. Since then I have been helping in the forum with questions about raspiBackup.

I don't really think much of videos but prefer textual descriptions (you can search there) but in the boring Corona period I created several videos about raspiBackup and published them on Youtube. I didn't put much effort into it, unlike other people who publish very fancy videos on YouTube: I created a few slides and then explained them in presentation mode. Later I created a few videos with practical use of raspiBackup on the command line. But the number of people watching the videos is growing. So the effort was not useless.

Franjo from Raspberryforum wrote a small tool called raspiBackupDialog with which the backup and restore with raspiBackup can be done dialogue-guided.

At some point I also created a Facebook group for raspiBackup. Initially, raspiBackup users were able to contact me directly. But at some point this became too much for me as it eventually turned into an unpaid 7/24 hotline support for raspiBackup.

Finally, I set up a PayPal account to which anyone who likes raspiBackup can donate. Of course I won't get rich but I can buy dedicated test HW from time to time because I can't and don't want to shut down my productive systems to test and maintain raspiBackup. There is also a lot of wear and tear on SD cards and SSDs during testing that need to be replaced. Finally, I was able to install and test Ubuntu support thanks to the donations.

In addition, many small scripts were created to support the use of raspiBackup.

A few statistics about raspiBackup:

 * 5 languages are supported (German, English, Finnish, French and Chinese)

 * raspiBackup consists of almost 12000 lines of code. This includes 376 messages in the various languages.

 * Almost 55000 invocations of raspiBackup in the month of July 2023

 * Average of 1700 invocation of raspiBackup per day in the month of July 2023

 * 602 Github users have given raspiBackup a star, signalling they like it

Herewith I give out a virtual round of free beer to celebrate the day.