Release Candidate for 1.5.3rc1

[buhtz]

FYI: Will merge this today or tomorrow because it is an RC and not a full release.

Summary

This is a release candidate. Please report if you use it even if there are no new problems.

The minimum supported Python version has beend raised to 3.9. The user manual has migrated to a new format and build system, now including sections on user callbacks and detailed example scripts. The code base has undergone extensive refactoring. FCron support has been added. The English strings in the GUI have been optimized. Serbian language is now available in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Interlingua (Occidental) has been introduced as a new language. The libnotify-bin (notify-send) dependency has been removed, as Back In Time now uses DBus for notifications.

Contributors

This version received extensive support from external contributors (in alphabetical order):

• Keith Bates @dnerever

• David Gibbs @fallingrock

• Derek Veit @DerekVeit

• Timothy Southwick @NickNackGus

• Felix Stupp @Zocker1999NET

• Ihor Pryyma @Ihor-Pryyma

• Kosta Vukicevic @stcksmsh

• David Wales @daviewales

• Paul Worrall @Silver-Saucepan

• Manuel @feman323

• Also not to be forgotten are the many people who supported the project by testing it, providing feedback, reporting issues, and analyzing problems.

Installation

This release contains the source code only but no distro packages. To install the new release from the source code please follow our build & installation instructions.

Known major issues open

• qt_probing.py may hang with high CPU usage when running Back In Time as root via cron (qt5_probing.py makes xorg.bin run with high CPU usage, eating RAM #1592)
• File permissions handling and therefore possible non-differential backups ("New" permissions handling in 1.2.0 causes re-backup of files that haven't changed #988 & Files with permissions r--r--r-- being repeatedly backed up #994)

Changelog

• Doc: User manual (build with MkDocs) (Migrate user manual to MkDocs #1838) (Kosta Vukicevic @stcksmsh)
• Doc: User-callback topic in user manual (User manual: Document user-callback scripts for users (migrate to MkDocs) #1659)
• Feature: Support language Interlingua (Occidental)
• Feature: Warn if destination directory is formatted as NTFS (Invalid argument (22) (NTFS target drive) #1854) (David Gibbs @fallingrock)
• Breaking Change: Minimal Python version 3.9 required (Drop Python3.8 support this year #1731)
• Breaking Change: Auto migration of config version 4 or lower not longer supported
• Fix: Prevent duplicates in Exclude/Include list of Manage Profiles dialog
• Fix: Fix Qt segmentation fault when canceling out of unconfigured BiT (Segmentation fault on Exit (Qt) #1095) (Derek Veit @DerekVeit)
• Fix: Correct global flock fallbacks (Automated backups failing due to KeyException in flock.py #1834) (Timothy Southwick @NickNackGus)
• Fix: Use SSH key password only if it is valid, otherwise request it from user (backintime-askpass and ssh-add enter infinite loop when cached SSH key password does not match current password #1852) (David Wales @daviewales)
• Feature: Support fcron (Support for fcrontab #610)
• Feature: User message about release candidate (Proposal: Message to users about Release Candidate feedback #1906)
• Refactor: General tab and its Schedule section
• Refactor: Own module for Manage Profiles dialog and separate Generals tab code (refactor: Separate code about Manage profile dialog #1865)
• Refactor: Remove class OrderedSet
• Refactor: Remove os.system() from class Execute
• Refactor: Systray notifications send utilize DBUS instead of notify-send (Fix: Send notifies directly using python-dbus replacing notify-send #1156) (Felix Stupp @Zocker1999NET)
• Refactor!: Remove unused config field "user_callback.no_logging" ("user_callback.no_logging" not in GUI / Maybe remove it #1887)
• Refactor!: Remove eCryptFS check for home folder (Remove "tools.checkHomeEncrypt()" (was: Password cache and encrypted home directory) #1855)
• Dependency: Remove libnotify-bin (notify-send) (Fix: Send notifies directly using python-dbus replacing notify-send #1156)
• Build: Replace "pycodestyle" linter with "flake8" (Support ed25519 SSH keys for SSH tests #1839)