Castled

Simple backups for Omarchy. Opinionated defaults, zero ceremony.

Omarchy gives you a beautiful, modern, fully configured Linux system in one shot — the omakase menu, chef's choice. Castled applies the same spirit to backups: a tiny, plain-text tool that saves the dotfiles you care about without turning disaster recovery into another configuration hobby.

No bespoke backup framework. No paradox of choice. Just init, backup, and restore.

Why Castled?

  • Curated from the start — simple-backup init writes a sensible Omarchy-oriented config.yml you can edit in seconds.
  • Plain text, terminal-first — one YAML file lists what to save and where; everything else stays out of your way.
  • Restore when it matters — list backups, pick one, preview with --dry-run, diff with --diff.
  • Substitutions welcome — change paths, add folders, point destination at your USB drive. The defaults are a starting point, not a contract.

Installation

gem build castled.gemspec
gem install castled-*.gem

Or from the project directory:

bundle install
bundle exec rake install

Quick start

Initialize

Create a config.yml in the current directory:

simple-backup init

Example config.yml (also what init generates):

backup_name: omarchy
backup_paths:
  - ~/.bash_logout
  - ~/.bash_profile
  - ~/.bashrc
  - ~/.gemrc
  - ~/.XCompose
destination: /run/media/leonid/250GB/backups

Adjust backup_paths and destination to match your machine. Plug in an external drive, point destination at its mount path, and you're done.

Backup

Copy configured paths to a timestamped folder under destination:

simple-backup backup

Backups are stored as backup_name_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS (e.g. omarchy_20260519_112300).

Schedule with cron

Run backups automatically from the directory that holds your config.yml:

crontab -e

Example — backup every day at 9:00 AM:

0 9 * * * cd /path/to/backup-config && /usr/bin/env simple-backup backup

Use full paths in cron jobs when possible; cron runs with a smaller environment than your interactive shell.

Restore

List available backups and restore one interactively:

simple-backup restore

Restore copies files back to their original locations (overwriting existing files).

Preview without writing:

simple-backup restore --dry-run
simple-backup restore 1 --dry-run --diff

Dry run reports:

  • files that would be copied to new paths
  • files that would overwrite existing paths
  • optional unified diffs for overwritten text files (--diff, requires --dry-run)

Development

bundle install
bundle exec ruby -Ilib:test test/test_*.rb