Add RFC: Automatic Configuration Backup

text/0031-automatic-backups.md

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+# Summary
+
+Add built-in backup functionality to OBS Studio.
+
+# Motivation
+
+As of writing OBS does not offer any native option for users to have their settings (profiles and scene collections)
+automatically backed up to cloud, local, or network storage. At the moment backing up OBS' entire configuration data
+is also not easily possible or intuitively explained for non-technical users.
+
+This RFC is meant to firstly facilitate a discussion to determine a high-level approach to implementing a backup
+feature in OBS Studio, before then formulating a specification for the low-level implementation of the chosen approach.
+
+# Detailed changes
+
+To start, I propose the following three approaches for discussion (though more should be suggested and discussed):
+
+ 1. Automatic export to user-specified storage location
+ 2. Integration of third party (cloud) storage providers
+ 3. Backup infrastructure and account system operated by the OBS Project
+
+Additionally, this RFC will lay out some ideas for how to integrate these backup/restore functionality into the OBS UI.
+
+## Overview of the three suggested variants
+
+### 1. Automatic export
+
+Arguably the easiest approach is to add an option to automatically export/save OBS configuration files to an additional
+location when they are written. This could be configured by the user to be a synced folder (e.g. Dropbox or Google Drive)
+or a network drive, but could also be simply a different storage drive for redundancy.
+
+Versioned backups could be implemented by allowing backups to be sorted by date or time in the filename or folder path.
+
+### 2. Third party storage providers
+
+For this option OBS would include native support for at least one third party storage provider, either through their
+public APIs or GPL-compatible SDKs provided by the platform.
+
+Examples include:
+
+- Dropbox
+- Google Drive
+- Microsoft OneDrive
+- Platforms that support standardized APIs such as WebDAV or S3
+
+Ideally the providers implemented are available to end users directly and already have a large user base among OBS users.
+Google Drive or Dropbox would likely be good candidates for the latter case.
+
+In the case of Dropbox or Google we could integrate the providers' native SDK or REST API with OBS in order to upload,
+download, and manage backed up files. They also support version histories (at least 30 days) that could be exposed in
+OBS to allow for restoring older versions e.g. after accidental changes or deletions.
+
+This is likely the favoured option for feature set and cost, since using the APIs would likely be free to the OBS Project
+and users, though at least Google may require a lengthy review process to allow full access to APIs (see [Restricted scopes])
+
+[Restricted scopes]: https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914#restricted-scopes
+
+### 3. OBS Project provided solution
+
+In this case the OBS Project would provide storage and an account system for uploading, downloading, and authenticating backups.
+For example this could be implemented by authenticating uploads/downloads to/from an object storage backend that is hosted by a
+third party such as Amazon AWS, Backblaze, or OVH.
+
+This approach has a lot of downsides; namely operating and development cost, data security and maintenance requirements.
+
+Due to complexity and cost this likely the least favored approach to backups for everyone involved.
+
+## UI Changes
+
+The configuration for OBS backups would be handled by a new tab in the settings titled "Backup".
+This would contain the options to authenticate and configure the chosen backup provider and may contain statistics and
+information about the number, size, and up-to-date ness of backups. Options shall include frequency, maximum size,
+and whether the backup system shall be disabled while an output is active.
+
+Restoring backups should be possible in at least two ways: full restore and individual file restore.
+
+For full restore the controls shall be present in the backup settings tab and allow to restore all profiles and collections
+at once based on the latest uploaded full backup. For individual restore the option should be part of the "Profile" and
+"Scene Collections" dropdown, named "Import from Backup", and be placed adjacent to the "Import" and "Export" features.
+These would invoke a Qt dialogue presenting a list of backed up collections/profiles, optionally allowing the user to restore
+a certain revision if the storage backend supports this functionality.
+
+## Further considerations
+
+As proposed the backup functionality would *not* back up assets used as part of a scene collection.
+Backing up assets may however be desirable in order to make OBS backups truly portable across machines.
+
+Adding features such as proposed in [OBS PR #2233] to more easily add missing assets can alleviate this however, as long 
+as the assets are stored in some synchronized storage system (e.g. the `%USERPROFILE%/Dropbox` directory) by the user.
+
+[OBS PR #2233]: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/2233
+
+# Additional Information
+
+## Possible cloud providers' third party integration documentation
+
+- Google Drive: https://developers.google.com/drive
+- Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation
+- OneDrive: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive