My opinion is that most people should choose bacularis. My understanding is
that bacularis and baculum are both developed by Marcin Haba. My feel for
the issue is that bacularis has more features and distribution methods than
baculum. Bacularis is released and updated on a cadence that makes sense to
Marcin, not the release cadence used by bacula CE. Bacularis also used some
distribution methods that might not be considered in scope as part of
bacula CE. For example, some bacularis docker images can come with bacula
components included, to make adopting bacula as easy as possible. Of
course, bacularis is also available in many different package and
distribution types, without any bacula components included. Marcin is
heavily active on this list, and very responsive.

The single largest reason to select baculum in my mind is if your
organization has a preference for packages released from an "official"
project repo, or a more conservative preference for their software. I don't
know of any case where Marcin's software has proven immature or unreliable,
but I imagine some environments have biases in that direction just because
of an institutional attitude towards risk.

In an attempt to secure funding to support development, Marcin has limited
system package manager repository access to (one or two, can't recall)
hosts per registrant, and only major version releases. Paid supporters get
more installation hosts, and the latest versions, including minor releases.
Alternative installation methods are available, without those limitations.
I believe it is important to support our developers, so while I have been
unable to afford to contribute yet, I accept the inconvenience
understanding the reality of the situation.

Both bacularis and baculum rely on php. Additionally, if used to edit the
bacula configuration, both bacularis and baculum will reparse the
configuration, wiping out all the comments. This is not the fault of
bacularis and baculum, but is caused by the bacula config parser. I suspect
BAT probably uses the same parser, and has the same limitations. I want to
keep my comments, so only edit my config files using text editors.
Bacularis will not edit the bacula configuration without your consent,
though as far as I know there is no warning about comments.

For myself, I have used both, and overall prefer bacularis.


Robert Gerber
402-237-8692
[email protected]

On Mon, May 25, 2026, 1:33 PM Phil Stracchino <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 5/25/26 01:59, Marcin Haba wrote:
> > I'm happy to announce that we have released version 6.2.0 of the
> > Bacularis web interface.
>
>
> So since it appears I am shortly going to be forced to switch to a web
> Bacula admin interface whether I want to or not¹, since it is clear BAT
> is de-facto abandoned² ... there are currently two, Baculum and
> Bacularis.  Can anyone offer any insights upon choosing between one and
> the other?  Or is it just "Try both and see which you like"?
>
>
>
> ¹ I have never been a believer in the idea that everything need be, or
> even SHOULD be, a web application.  But this isn't the time or place for
> a discussion of all the reasons why.
>
> ² I'd volunteer to take over maintaining BAT myself, if I labored under
> the delusion that my coding skills were even remotely up to it, but I am
> not self-delusional enough to believe that they are.  I've never built
> anything using Qt and never learned C++.
>
>
> --
>    Phil Stracchino
>    Fenian House Publishing
>    [email protected]
>    [email protected]
>    Landline: +1.603.293.8485
>    Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bacula-users mailing list
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
>
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