Installation

Packages

Mac OS X

If you are using Mac OS X, you can install restic using the homebrew package manager:

$ brew install restic

Arch Linux

On Arch Linux, there is a package called restic-git which can be installed from AUR, e.g. with pacaur:

$ pacaur -S restic-git

Nix & NixOS

If you are using Nix or NixOS there is a package available named restic. It can be installed uisng nix-env:

$ nix-env --install restic

Debian

On Debian, there’s a package called restic which can be installed from the official repos, e.g. with apt-get:

$ apt-get install restic

Warning

Please be aware that, at the time of writing, Debian stable has restic version 0.3.3 which is very old. The testing and unstable branches have recent versions of restic.

Pre-compiled Binary

You can download the latest pre-compiled binary from the restic release page.

Docker Container

Note

A docker container is available as a contribution (Thank you!).

From Source

restic is written in the Go programming language and you need at least Go version 1.8. Building restic may also work with older versions of Go, but that’s not supported. See the Getting started guide of the Go project for instructions how to install Go.

In order to build restic from source, execute the following steps:

$ git clone https://github.com/restic/restic
[...]

$ cd restic

$ go run build.go

You can easily cross-compile restic for all supported platforms, just supply the target OS and platform via the command-line options like this (for Windows and FreeBSD respectively):

$ go run build.go --goos windows --goarch amd64

$ go run build.go --goos freebsd --goarch 386

The resulting binary is statically linked and does not require any libraries.

At the moment, the only tested compiler for restic is the official Go compiler. Building restic with gccgo may work, but is not supported.

Autocompletion

Restic can write out a bash compatible autocompletion script:

$ ./restic autocomplete --help
The "autocomplete" command generates a shell autocompletion script.

NOTE: The current version supports Bash only.
      This should work for *nix systems with Bash installed.

By default, the file is written directly to /etc/bash_completion.d/ for convenience, and the command may need superuser rights, e.g.

$ sudo restic autocomplete

Usage:
  restic autocomplete [flags]

Flags:
      --completionfile string   autocompletion file (default "/etc/bash_completion.d/restic.sh")

Global Flags:
      --json                   set output mode to JSON for commands that support it
      --no-lock                do not lock the repo, this allows some operations on read-only repos
  -o, --option key=value       set extended option (key=value, can be specified multiple times)
  -p, --password-file string   read the repository password from a file
  -q, --quiet                  do not output comprehensive progress report
  -r, --repo string            repository to backup to or restore from (default: $RESTIC_REPOSITORY)