25 Aug 2022

We today happily announce the release of restic 0.14.0! \o/

This release contains a highly anticipated feature in restic - compression! To start using it, either initialize a new repository (which defaults to repository version 2 and therefore supports compression) or upgrade your current repository. The compression level can be changed from the default auto (fast and efficient) to max or off using the --compression option (or the corresponding environment variable). Please note that the new/upgraded repository can only be accessed by restic version 0.14 or higher.

Another feature that can be highly useful is the --unsafe-recover-no-free-space option to the prune command, which allows you to save the day when the repository storage has been completely saturated. Just make sure to read the corresponding documentation first!

Besides the above, here are some other notable fixes and improvements in this release:

• Ability to tune the number of concurrent backend connections, increasing backup performance.
• Ability to increase pack size, increasing backup performance and using less storage resources.
• The check --read-data and prune commands no longer uses temporary files when reading from the repository, resulting in less disk I/O.
• The copy command’s performance has been greatly improved.
• The init and copy commands have a new --from-repo option, replacing the now deprecated --repo2 option.
• The backup command now uses around 30% less memory when backing up directories with hundreds of thousands (or more) files.

For downloading the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.