Tool Backup Plasma Settings?

Brainstorm
,
1

Hi all,

Perhaps it is already requested. The one thing i really mis is a KDE native tool to backup DE plasma settings without having to copy/past all of my .local and .config files onto a new system. A migration tool if you will.

Anyhow : great work developers .. KDE plasma has grown a lot.
Been with KDE from the very start.

regard from the Netherlands,
Dexter

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hi, welcome.

all that is needed is someone with the time and skill to make such a tool.

i think everyone would agree that it is desirable.

the move from Qt5 to Qt6 (and hence plasma 5 to plasma 6) has broken a lot of the old tools for thisā€¦ iā€™m sure new ones will emerge eventually.

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for now iā€™ve written a cli tool that backup and restores the settings (on gitlab) however iā€™m not a pro :slight_smile: Hope indeed a KDE settings native migratoin tool emerges. Perhaps with a backupfile witch can be imported withhin the KDE settings dialog

4

konsave

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so is that working with plasma 6 now?

are you using it?

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Ah, I havenā€™t used it for a while now to be honest, I just occasionally switch colour theme.

7

as a part of KDE suite

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There is Kup : Kup - Applications de KDE
Part of Plasma Kde.

I donā€™t use it, but Iā€™ve tried it out. I use Vorta

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Ive seen Kup in 6.7, however it does not support selecting just the KDE plasma settings. It is pure a backup tool for all files as i see

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10

I donā€™t agree. And what do you mean by ā€˜KDE Plasma settingsā€™? If you mean the .config and .local folders, then itā€™s entirely possible.

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it ā€œsupportsā€ it if you know which files to back up :wink:

aye, thar be the rub.

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This is why I liked konsave - lots of applications have theming options that arenā€™t included in the basic KDE Plasma setupā€¦

So itā€™s good to have an option to add extra foldersā€¦ when I first used it I was upset that most of the desktop went nice and creamy (vs the usual dark) but some of my text editors/office apps still had their original settings.

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what is needed is a some sort of crawler that associates settings with applications

then a nice GUI wrapper for that crawler and konsave (or something like it) so the user can see a list of their installed software and be able to save ALL of itā€™s settings by checking a single box.

same with restoring those settings.

this GUI abstraction layer should be package format agnostic as well so it does not matter to the user whether the package was installed as native, flatpak, snap or perhaps even appimage.

iā€™m imagining something akin to how flatseal manages flatpak permissions, but for settings/preferences.

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For that, I guess a list of .config with checkboxes would do the jobā€¦ but the option to add a file/folder for any outliers, plus options for which plasma items to save.

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what iā€™m suggesting is that this application keep track of what files are associated with which apps so you donā€™t have to select anything else but the app.

i imagine this would be some kind of database with a background process that ā€œwatchesā€ when applications are installed/used to determine which files it might be modifying and to add those to the source list for that appā€¦ or maybe this kind of thing is already tracked by the package manager.

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It would be nice to do some rationalisation of how KDE apps and components store their config too.

e.g. Thereā€™s a subdir ~/.config/akonadi, but also various ~/.config/akonadi*rc files outside of that subdir.

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Then thereā€™s kitty, with ~/.conf/kitty/current-theme.conf and also a themes folder and stuff.

With the old Plasmoid ā€˜plasma config saverā€™ it captured all by backing up entire folders, but that led to massive bloat - loads of icons and wallpapers and so on.

So itā€™s tricky to track all configuration files and combinations for different applications.

Plasma applications are basic and simple - you just hit all the known locations and copy them.

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iā€™ve been collecting the basic KDE plasma settings files and locations.
perhaps i donā€™t have all locations (yet). This could be a quick default (file and location selection) preset for Kbackup.

I now use this function after a setting change.

###

Show recently modified files in ~/.local and ~/.config

showconfigchanges() {
local minuten=${1:-60}
echo ā€œFiles modified in the last ${minuten} minute(s):ā€
echo
find ~/.local ~/.config -type f -mmin -ā€œ${minuten}ā€
-printf ā€˜%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM %p\nā€™ 2>/dev/null
| sort -r
}

For collecting config file locations, on windows there was a tool witch keeps track of all changes on an install. As i know, there is no such tool for linux. Please correct me if that is a wrong assumption

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~/.config entries:
- gtk-2.0
- gtk-3.0
- gtk-4.0
- kate
- Kvantum
- dolphinrc
- katerc
- konsolerc
- kcminputrc
- kdeglobals
- kglobalshortcutsrc
- klipperrc
- krunnerrc
- kscreenlockerrc
- ksmserverrc
- kwinrc
- kwinrulesrc
- plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc
- plasmarc
- plasmashellrc
- gtkrc
- gtkrc-2.0
- breezerc
- oxygenrc
- fish
- ksplashrc

App layouts ~/.local/share/kxmlgui5

  • dolphin
  • konsole
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On my system i have a split of backing up settings :

  • kde base settings
  • KDE apps
  • other non KDE applications
  • Personal settins and folders

This because whenever i install a new system with KDE, i decide what te get back. Base KDE settings first. then the rest,

What system do you have for backup and restore? All settings at once or something like my setup

1 Like