Dan's Zip Util

A rudimentary CLI-based backup tool.

Tell it:

• Which folders you want backed-up
• Where to save backups

And it will:

• Zip the folders up
• Name them according to today's date
• Copy them to each location you've requested

Installation

DZU is available from NPM, just run:

npm i -g dzu

Basic Usage

When you first setup DZU, you'll need to tell it which folders to backup and save backups to.

dzu init
dzu protect /path/to/precious-photos
dzu protect /path/to/precious-documents
dzu use /path/to/backups-folder

But once that's done, whenever it comes time to run a backup, all you need to do is:

dzu run

For more information about the available commands, run dzu help.

Developing DZU

1. First, if you have dzu installed, temporarily uninstall it with npm uninstall -g dzu.

2. Next, clone the repo, install dependencies, and setup the needed symlinks with:

   git clone https://github.com/dan-schel/dzu.git
   cd dzu
   npm i
   npm link
   npm link dzu

   This creates two symlinks at the location where NodeJS is installed, e.g. /home/dan/.nvm/versions/node/v22.16.0. The first is in [NODEJS]/bin/dzu, which symlinks to [NODEJS]/lib/node_modules/dzu, which itself is a symlink to the cloned repository.

3. Rename both symlinks to dzu-dev or something. (Be sure to update the symlink at [NODEJS]/bin/dzu to point to the renamed [NODEJS]/lib/node_modules/dzu-dev.)

4. In a new terminal, run npm run dev and leave it running in the background.

5. Now that both symlinks are renamed dzu-dev, you should be able to safely re-install the production dzu from NPM if you wish.

6. Now so long as npm run dev remains running, the dzu-dev command should react to source code changes inside this folder. The regular dzu command will still run the production version, completely unaffected by anything we touch here.

   You can test it by modifying the version field in package.json. Running dzu-dev -v should cause the updated value to print, however dzu -v should still match whichever version you've installed from NPM.

   (This separation extends to the configuration. The development version will store configuration in a separate ~/.dzu-dev file to avoid impacting ~/.dzu.)