Choose path for the output file
Thanks for Epistolaire! I like the simplicity of it, but one thing it's missing is the ability to specify your own output path. I configured nearly all my apps to (manually or automatically) export important backup data to centralized directory which is sync'd with syncthing. This is difficult with Epistolaire because of the hardcoded output path.
I was able to work around this limitation by hardlinking /data/media/0/Android/data/re.indigo.epistolaire/files/backup.json
to ../../../../Sync/epistolaire.json
. It works, but it requires root access and technical knowledge about Android's filesystems. It has to be a hardlink, a symlink does not work. It probably does not work on phones with a physical (FAT formatted) sdcard. It also may cause problems because the OS does not expect hardlinks in /sdcard
. I'd prefer if I didn't have to do it this way.
For oandbackup users, another possible workaround is to enable inclusion of external app data (/sdcard/Android/data/*
) in oandbackup. However this is a global option and cannot be specified on a per-app basis.
Most backup apps can probably be configured to include /sdcard/Android/data/re.indigo.epistolaire/files
, but a centralized backup directory is more convenient, and some apps like Dropbox only sync a single directory per device.
Also, storing the backup in this path means that the backup is deleted when Epistolaire is uninstalled (or by the clear data button in settings), which many users might not be expecting.
It looks like Epistolaire already requires read-write external storage permission, so adding this feature should not require any additional permissions.