Use case of adding path when backup with existing snapshots

Getting Help
1

Hello !

It’s been a while that I perform daily snapshots of one directory ‘/foo’:

restic backup --repo=local:<my local path> --skip-if-unchanged --dry-run /foo

However, now I want to add another directory ‘/bar’ but I understand that when changing paths:

restic backup --repo=local:<my local path> --skip-if-unchanged --dry-run /foo /bar

It does not find a parent snapshot:

no parent snapshot found, will read all files

So all files (even on ‘/foo’) appear as new, for example :

new       /foo/<file>, saved in 0.006s (0 B added, 0 B stored)

I am afraid to perform the backup because I don’t understand well what the effect will be on my local repo and the snapshots. I understand this issue has been mentioned and a PR is ongoing : backup --files-from-verbatim allow merging snapshots by gmgigi96 · Pull Request #3405 · restic/restic · GitHub

  1. What will be the consequences of performing backup as is (without the PR) on my local repo and snapshots history ?
  2. What would you suggest in this use case ?

Thank you,

My restic version is:

restic 0.19.1 compiled with go1.26.4-X:nodwarf5 on linux/amd64
2

it says it all:) rustic will have to read all files which will take a bit longer than backup with parent snapshot. Only data not in your repository yet will be backed up. If anything already exist it only will be referenced. More details here.

In terms of already existing snapshots - nothing will happen. They will still exist together with your new path one.

3

Thanks, it seems to be working smoothly without changing anything :slight_smile: