Re: [Evolution] Backing up Evolution Data

[Ángel González <angel 16bits net>]

Evolution uses different folders for different types of content,
following the XDG Base Specification, which is actually a good thing.

> From this info:
> https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/data-storage.html.en
> I understand want to copy this folder:
>
>     ~/.local/share/evolution
Here is the "general" data -including emails-.


>     ~/.config/evolution

Whereas the files here are configuration settings that could be
recreated by the user if needed.


>     ~/.cache/evolution

And this is data which can be safely discardewd.


>     ~/.config/dconf (*)
> But into ~/.config/dconf are stored all DCONF setting of all other
> application, an in this case I want to copy only Evo settings, not
> the rest.

That's true, although it's a problem of dconf, not something specific
to evolution.

You can export only evolution-related data with: 

dconf  dump /org/gnome/evolution/
dconf  dump /org/gnome/evolution-data-server/


Zan wrote:
> One single .application directory like Firefox uses in .mozilla and
> Thunderbird in .thunderbird is far more manageable and useful.


Actually, Firefox no longer does this. It now uses: 

~/.mozilla/firefox/<profilename>/
~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/<profilename>/


Which is a perfect example of why the XDG spec split the folders in
this way, instead of saying "put everything about the program into
~/.apps/<programname>".

It makes no sense to include in a firefox backup hundreds of MB that
are just downloaded web pages and won't be of any use if restored
later. Excluding ~/.cache you can easily exclude from a backup the
unneeded data from all (conformant) programs.