mackup: deprecate

[chrisbloom7]

mackup works by moving config files to an off-disk backup location (usually a cloud storage provider like iCloud or Dropbox, etc.) and then replacing the original file with a symlink to the backed up version. The intended use is to make sure program configuration settings and preferences can be restored if you need to replace computers, factory reset, etc.

As documented here, here, here, mackup backup no longer works on MacOS Sonoma (likely due to security changes in the app sandbox in Sonoma) and running either the backup or restore commands on MacOS Sonoma will result in the loss of all preference files. Users who backup to a storage provider that has versioning or backup snapshots may be able to restore preferences to an older version. For users backing up to other storage providers that do not have this feature, such as iCloud, the command results in total data loss. This issue has been known to the developer for over a year but there is no fix, no mention of the issue in the project README, no warning when running the command, and no indication in the program output that the backup process may not have completed properly - neither in the dry-run mode nor in live mode.

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[SMillerDev]

So is the project deprecated? Or you just shouldn't use it on Sonoma?

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[chrisbloom7]

@SMillerDev It doesn't really fall cleanly into either deprecated or disabled. Having seen this warning recently when auditing my brewfile, I assumed this might fall into the same category. (Though I initially thought that was coming from a deprecation message when trying to install the postgres cask, not realizing until today that it had been renamed to postgres-unofficial and that warning was referring to the official postgresql database formula)

#181592 also seemed relevant when I went looking for examples of how to deprecate a formula. I'll defer to you if this isn't the appropriate way to go, but I was surprised to discover this morning that all of my preferences had been deleted, then dismayed to learn that this is a known problem that a lot of other folks have already posted about in the repo, and then just shocked to learn that the developer hasn't made any effort to warn Sonoma users that this could happen despite publishing a new version just a couple weeks ago.

[chrisbloom7]

(fixed the links in the description)

[chrisbloom7]

Apparently there is a workaround one can try that may be able to restore preferences that were lost by tricking the program into trying to do a backup or restore, during which symlinking will fail, and then use the uninstall command to force the program to move the backed up files back to their original locations in place of the missing symlinks. Changes are no longer automatically backed up this way, so the program is still technically broken, but it does mean the data loss may not be permanent in all cases.

[SMillerDev]

Seeing how it's not actually deprecated, just broken I don't think we should deprecate this.

[chrisbloom7]

Understood. Thanks for walking me through it!