[Duplicity-talk] proposal: backup space usage distribution analysis

[Andreas Schildbach]

I'd like to propose a new feature, which I'd like to discuss here first 
before posting it to the issue tracker.

In order to optimize size (and duration) of backups, it is useful to 
exclude some directories with the various -exclude options. A common 
example is "/tmp".

When you try to find more candidates, it is helpful to know the 
distribution of space each directory consumes in a backup. For full 
backups this can be easily analyzed by looking at the directory of the 
compressed data. For incremental backups this is probably not this easy, 
especially if you want to accumulate over several successive backups.

I think it would be most useful if output would be compatible with the 
"du" command, mainly because several other tools take that as an input 
(e.g. Baobab).

What do you think?

Regards,

Andreas