#224 Support for many cloud providers via rclone

[Ole G]

This could be regarded as a more general suggestion than feature request #217.

rclone supports access to a vast number of cloud backends, it might be more flexible (and even easier?) to support access via rclon's backends than implementing access for a few selected ones in dar.

sftp file specification (from a sftp-backup example in the dar documentation):
-c sftp://denis@dar/home/denis/backup

Syntax for an equivalent backup to an rclone backend (could be Google Drive) called drive1:
-c rclone:drive1:denis/backup

Authentication is made through rclone's configuration file.

Idea taken from restic, which also has sftp as remote storage support, plus support for cloud providers via rclone backends.

Regards, Ole G

[Ole G]

Forgot to mention that sequential support already is available, using rclone and pipes:

Create, list on cloud drive and list contents of a dar archive :

dar -N -R /cygwin -g f/dar-test -c - | rclone rcat k1:dar

rclone lsl k1:dar
6299222 2025-12-17 17:22:59.280000000 dar

rclone cat k1:dar | dar -l - --sequential-read

[Denis Corbin]

rclone seems closed sources and a single executable. Don't see how to integrate it with an application (dar/libdar) without an API and library

[Ole G]

I'm not sure it's closed source, and there is an API:
https://github.com/rclone/rclone/blob/master/librclone/README.md

The way restic provides access to ALL rclone-supported backends suggests to me that one doesn't have to provide (much) backend-specific code.
There might very well be other (language-specific) obstacles, though...

[Denis Corbin]

will see that in time, thanks for the information