Borg Explorer is a cross-platform application for Linux and Mac that allows you to browse through your Borg repositories without needing to mount them. It is intended to be a simple alternative to the borg mount subcommand for cases where FUSE mounts are not available.

Info

• Status: Semi-Active Development (Updates when and if I need them 😊)
• Source/Download: https://github.com/Netruk44/borg-repository-explorer
• Technologies & Languages: Electron, HTML, Javascript, CSS

Why

I began using Borg this year (2022) to manage my machine archives. Currently, my ‘main’ machine is my M1 MacBook Pro. MacOS doesn’t natively support FUSE mounts, which is how one usually browses Borg archives after creation (through use of borg mount). Therefore, I was in need of a GUI for Borg that didn’t rely on the mount subcommand.

I did some searching, but couldn’t find anything that fit the bill. The recent trend when I started this project was to have ChatGPT design and implement entire websites and applications for you. So I thought I would give that a shot on my own, and ask it for guidance how to make a cross-platform GUI application.

ChatGPT recommended some GUI frameworks like QT and wxWidgets, as well as Electron. Electron seemed like the easiest fit for ChatGPT to help me with, so I decided to embark on making a GUI app in Electron with the assistance of ChatGPT.

Eventually, I got tired of trying to form my code queries in the form of a chat message, so I decided to use Copilot instead.

Screenshots

Also available in the GitHub Repository. Screenshots below may be out of date.