README
¶
Point-in-time recovery for MySQL and PostgreSQL --- no locks, no schema changes, no waiting for a restore.
SELECT * FROM orders WHERE id = 123 AS OF '2026-05-20 14:00:00'
— against production MySQL/Postgres. That's the experience dbtrail makes possible.
What you get
dbtrail tails the MySQL binary log or the Postgres WAL and keeps every row change with full before/after images in a searchable index:
- See every change — what changed and when, for every row, with before → after diffs
- Undo precisely — generate exact reversal SQL for just the damaged rows
- Undo foreign-key cascades — reconstruct child rows an
ON DELETE CASCADEwiped out, and restore the foreign keys anON DELETE SET NULLcleared or anON UPDATE CASCADE/SET NULLre-pointed when a parent's key changed — all of which InnoDB applies below the binlog, where most tools can't see them — see Query & Recovery - Time-travel — query any row (or table) as it was at any moment, from the web console or the
reconstructCLI; the live SQLAS OFinterface additionally needs ProxySQL — see Time-Travel SQL - Who changed this? — session attribution (database user, host, and client program behind a change) is available in the commercial distribution (dbtrail EE)
- Prove the safety net holds —
bintrail verifychecks (off-line, drift-free) that a recovery would actually reproduce the source, andbintrail statusflags any gap in the captured stream — so you find out before you need it — see Verify - Web console — browse, recover, and add servers to monitor, all in the UI
- Ask it in plain English — connect Claude Desktop to your console in one click (an
.mcpbbundle and a copy-paste URL: 5-minute guide); any MCP client works — see the MCP server reference
Works with MySQL, Percona Server for MySQL, Amazon RDS for MySQL,
and Amazon Aurora MySQL (verified); Google Cloud SQL for MySQL is
expected to work — please report issues. dbtrail connects
over the replication protocol, so it never needs the binlog files on disk
(that's what makes managed cloud databases work). Requires MySQL 8.0+ with
binlog_format=ROW and binlog_row_image=FULL; bintrail doctor checks both
and prints the exact fix.
Install
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dbtrail/dbtrail/main/install.sh | sh
This downloads the Compose stack, brings it up, waits for the console, and prints what to do next. Then:
- Open http://127.0.0.1:8090 — on first run, create a username and password (that's your login from now on).
- Click + Add server, pick the source type (MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL), and paste the database you want to watch — host, user, password. dbtrail runs preflight checks, provisions an index, and starts streaming within the minute.
PostgreSQL & MariaDB (alpha) sources
The same one-line install — the console captures PostgreSQL and MariaDB
sources too, not just MySQL. In + Add server, choose the source type;
PostgreSQL reveals fields for the database, replication slot, and publication.
PostgreSQL needs a one-time source-side setup first (wal_level = logical,
REPLICA IDENTITY FULL, and a publication — dbtrail validates these and never
runs DDL on your source). Full walkthrough, incl. managed RDS/Aurora/Cloud SQL:
PostgreSQL source · MariaDB source
(alpha).
Just curious? One container, zero setup, time-travel SQL in 30 seconds:
docker run --rm -p 6033:6033 ghcr.io/dbtrail/bintrail-demo
See the demo image.
Documentation
Privacy
bintrail runs entirely in your infrastructure. Your database data never leaves it — not your rows, schemas, table names, queries, hostnames, DSNs, or file paths.
Official release builds do report metadata-only usage statistics: which command ran, whether it succeeded, a coarse error class, and your version and platform. It is on by default and off in one line:
bintrail telemetry off # or: DO_NOT_TRACK=1, BINTRAIL_TELEMETRY=off
bintrail telemetry show # see exactly what would be sent — sends nothing
No identifier of any kind is stored or transmitted, so there is nothing tying those statistics to you or your machine. A binary you build yourself has no reporting address compiled in and is incapable of sending anything. TELEMETRY.md documents every field, every control, and the CI tests that enforce both.
The privacy policy covers the Claude Desktop extension (.mcpb)
— which reports nothing at all — and how data moves when an AI client queries
your deployment.
License
Apache-2.0 — free for any use, including commercial and production. Contributions welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md (CLA required, prompted automatically on your first PR).
Want the index server operated for you — sized, backed up, upgraded, kept alive on-call — instead of running it yourself? That is the managed service at dbtrail.com. See SUPPORT.md for the ship-vs-operate boundary.
Directories
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| Path | Synopsis |
|---|---|
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Package assurance exposes read-only access to the backup-assurance signals — restore coverage, the capture-continuity verdict, baseline staleness, and the scheduled-verify run history — for tooling and embedding distributions that import the core as a module.
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Package assurance exposes read-only access to the backup-assurance signals — restore coverage, the capture-continuity verdict, baseline staleness, and the scheduled-verify run history — for tooling and embedding distributions that import the core as a module. |
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cmd
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bintrail
command
Command bintrail is the OSS binary.
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Command bintrail is the OSS binary. |
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bintrail-console
command
Command bintrail-console serves the read-only Bintrail web console as a standalone binary, decoupled from the core `bintrail` CLI.
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Command bintrail-console serves the read-only Bintrail web console as a standalone binary, decoupled from the core `bintrail` CLI. |
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bintrail-mcp
command
Bridge mode (--connect): a stdio ↔ Streamable-HTTP proxy.
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Bridge mode (--connect): a stdio ↔ Streamable-HTTP proxy. |
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bintrail-pg
command
Command bintrail-pg is the PostgreSQL-source sibling of the core bintrail binary.
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Command bintrail-pg is the PostgreSQL-source sibling of the core bintrail binary. |
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Package consoleapp is the importable command layer of the bintrail-console binary — the console sibling of the cliapp seam.
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Package consoleapp is the importable command layer of the bintrail-console binary — the console sibling of the cliapp seam. |
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Package ext exposes the extension points that embedding distributions — builds that import cliapp and wrap the OSS core — use to inject behavior: an audit sink recording data-access operations, extra doctor checks, agent WebSocket commands, and daemon source jobs.
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Package ext exposes the extension points that embedding distributions — builds that import cliapp and wrap the OSS core — use to inject behavior: an audit sink recording data-access operations, extra doctor checks, agent WebSocket commands, and daemon source jobs. |
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mcpext
Package mcpext is the extension seam for MCP tools: an embedding distribution registers a provider here and its tools appear on every MCP server the core builds — the standalone bintrail-mcp binary and the web console's /mcp endpoint alike.
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Package mcpext is the extension seam for MCP tools: an embedding distribution registers a provider here and its tools appear on every MCP server the core builds — the standalone bintrail-mcp binary and the web console's /mcp endpoint alike. |
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Package indexquery exposes read-only programmatic access to the bintrail index — live MySQL partitions and Parquet archives merged — for tooling and embedding distributions that import the core as a module.
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Package indexquery exposes read-only programmatic access to the bintrail index — live MySQL partitions and Parquet archives merged — for tooling and embedding distributions that import the core as a module. |
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internal
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agent
Package agent implements the outbound communication channel between the bintrail agent (running in customer infrastructure) and the dbtrail service.
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Package agent implements the outbound communication channel between the bintrail agent (running in customer infrastructure) and the dbtrail service. |
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archive
Package archive writes a binlog_events partition to a Parquet file before it is dropped.
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Package archive writes a binlog_events partition to a Parquet file before it is dropped. |
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audittest
Package audittest holds the canonical list of audit emissions the core must produce, plus the recording sink the contract tests drive it with.
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Package audittest holds the canonical list of audit emissions the core must produce, plus the recording sink the contract tests drive it with. |
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baseline
Package baseline converts mydumper output into Parquet files, enabling full audit reconstruction when combined with binlog change events.
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Package baseline converts mydumper output into Parquet files, enabling full audit reconstruction when combined with binlog change events. |
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baselineintegrity
Package baselineintegrity provides at-rest integrity for baseline Parquet files: a CRC-32C _MANIFEST sidecar written next to the _SUCCESS marker, validated on every baseline read path — local (#636) and S3 (#698).
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Package baselineintegrity provides at-rest integrity for baseline Parquet files: a CRC-32C _MANIFEST sidecar written next to the _SUCCESS marker, validated on every baseline read path — local (#636) and S3 (#698). |
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buffer
Package buffer provides an in-memory event buffer for BYOS mode.
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Package buffer provides an in-memory event buffer for BYOS mode. |
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byos
Package byos implements the Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS) data separation layer.
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Package byos implements the Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS) data separation layer. |
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cascade
Package cascade reconstructs the side effects of an InnoDB foreign-key cascade that InnoDB applied but never wrote to the binary log — ON DELETE CASCADE (deleted child rows), ON DELETE SET NULL (nulled child FKs), and their ON UPDATE siblings (child FKs rewritten to the parent's new key, or nulled, when the parent's referenced key is UPDATEd; #1002).
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Package cascade reconstructs the side effects of an InnoDB foreign-key cascade that InnoDB applied but never wrote to the binary log — ON DELETE CASCADE (deleted child rows), ON DELETE SET NULL (nulled child FKs), and their ON UPDATE siblings (child FKs rewritten to the parent's new key, or nulled, when the parent's referenced key is UPDATEd; #1002). |
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cascadebaseline
Package cascadebaseline implements cascade.BaselineProvider over internal/reconstruct — the Phase-2 fallback that lets cascade recovery recover a child row that has no binlog event in the lookback window by reading it out of a `bintrail baseline` Parquet snapshot.
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Package cascadebaseline implements cascade.BaselineProvider over internal/reconstruct — the Phase-2 fallback that lets cascade recovery recover a child row that has no binlog event in the lookback window by reading it out of a `bintrail baseline` Parquet snapshot. |
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cascaderecover
Package cascaderecover assembles the cascade-recovery SQL script (the documented preamble, the SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0/1 wrapper, the CASCADE re-INSERTs, and the idempotent SET NULL restorations) from a synthesized cascade result.
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Package cascaderecover assembles the cascade-recovery SQL script (the documented preamble, the SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0/1 wrapper, the CASCADE re-INSERTs, and the idempotent SET NULL restorations) from a synthesized cascade result. |
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cli
Package cli holds command-layer building blocks intended to be shared across bintrail binaries.
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Package cli holds command-layer building blocks intended to be shared across bintrail binaries. |
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cliutil
Package cliutil provides shared filter-parsing and output helpers used by both cmd/bintrail/ commands and cmd/bintrail-mcp/.
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Package cliutil provides shared filter-parsing and output helpers used by both cmd/bintrail/ commands and cmd/bintrail-mcp/. |
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consistency
Package consistency provides primitives that detect, with overwhelming probability, whether a Parquet snapshot diverges from the MySQL table it was taken from.
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Package consistency provides primitives that detect, with overwhelming probability, whether a Parquet snapshot diverges from the MySQL table it was taken from. |
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console
Package console serves an embedded, read-only, single-operator web UI over a bintrail index.
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Package console serves an embedded, read-only, single-operator web UI over a bintrail index. |
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duckdbtuning
Package duckdbtuning holds the shared DuckDB resource-tuning flags used by the offline query/recover/reconstruct/verify commands (#510/#511): the --ultrafast / --duckdb-threads / --duckdb-memory-limit flag set, the precedence resolution into a duckdbutil.Tuning, and the archive-fetcher adapter that carries that budget into parquetquery.
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Package duckdbtuning holds the shared DuckDB resource-tuning flags used by the offline query/recover/reconstruct/verify commands (#510/#511): the --ultrafast / --duckdb-threads / --duckdb-memory-limit flag set, the precedence resolution into a duckdbutil.Tuning, and the archive-fetcher adapter that carries that budget into parquetquery. |
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duckdbutil
Package duckdbutil holds small helpers shared by the DuckDB sessions bintrail opens (baseline reads, snapshot queries, S3 footer probes).
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Package duckdbutil holds small helpers shared by the DuckDB sessions bintrail opens (baseline reads, snapshot queries, S3 footer probes). |
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event
Package event holds the source-agnostic row-event type that flows from a capture backend into the indexer and the whole downstream value stack (query, recover, reconstruct, shim, console).
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Package event holds the source-agnostic row-event type that flows from a capture backend into the indexer and the whole downstream value stack (query, recover, reconstruct, shim, console). |
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indexer
Package indexer consumes parsed binlog events and batch-inserts them into the binlog_events table in the index MySQL database.
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Package indexer consumes parsed binlog events and batch-inserts them into the binlog_events table in the index MySQL database. |
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mcptools
Package mcptools implements the read-only Bintrail MCP tools — query, recover, status, list_schema_changes, and the opt-in reconstruct (#953) and recover_cascade (#1128) — decoupled from how the index connection is obtained.
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Package mcptools implements the read-only Bintrail MCP tools — query, recover, status, list_schema_changes, and the opt-in reconstruct (#953) and recover_cascade (#1128) — decoupled from how the index connection is obtained. |
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notify
Package notify is the console's outbound webhook notification channel: a generic JSON POST for the events that mean "your safety net has a hole" — continuity gap_lost, verify problems, rotation making no progress — plus edge-triggering so a persistent condition alerts on its transition (and once on recovery), not on every cycle.
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Package notify is the console's outbound webhook notification channel: a generic JSON POST for the events that mean "your safety net has a hole" — continuity gap_lost, verify problems, rotation making no progress — plus edge-triggering so a persistent condition alerts on its transition (and once on recovery), not on every cycle. |
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observe
Package observe provides shared observability setup for Bintrail: structured logging via log/slog and Prometheus metrics for the stream command.
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Package observe provides shared observability setup for Bintrail: structured logging via log/slog and Prometheus metrics for the stream command. |
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parquetquery
Package parquetquery implements a DuckDB-backed query engine for Parquet archive files.
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Package parquetquery implements a DuckDB-backed query engine for Parquet archive files. |
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parser
Package parser reads MySQL ROW-format binlog files and emits typed events.
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Package parser reads MySQL ROW-format binlog files and emits typed events. |
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pgbaseline
Package pgbaseline produces Parquet baseline snapshots directly from a live PostgreSQL source (#593 slice C) — the PG sibling of the mydumper→Parquet converter in internal/baseline, with no dump step: it COPYs each published table inside one REPEATABLE READ snapshot and streams the rows into internal/baseline.Writer.
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Package pgbaseline produces Parquet baseline snapshots directly from a live PostgreSQL source (#593 slice C) — the PG sibling of the mydumper→Parquet converter in internal/baseline, with no dump step: it COPYs each published table inside one REPEATABLE READ snapshot and streams the rows into internal/baseline.Writer. |
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pgcapture
Package pgcapture decodes a PostgreSQL logical-replication (pgoutput) stream into the source-neutral event.Event consumed by the indexer and the rest of bintrail's value stack — the PostgreSQL analog of the go-mysql binlog parser in internal/parser.
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Package pgcapture decodes a PostgreSQL logical-replication (pgoutput) stream into the source-neutral event.Event consumed by the indexer and the rest of bintrail's value stack — the PostgreSQL analog of the go-mysql binlog parser in internal/parser. |
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pgshim
Package pgshim is the PostgreSQL wire-protocol front-end for bintrail's time-travel engine (#1008).
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Package pgshim is the PostgreSQL wire-protocol front-end for bintrail's time-travel engine (#1008). |
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pgstreamrun
Package pgstreamrun is the PostgreSQL streaming CONSUMER: it drives the internal/pgcapture capturer (the producer) into the shared indexer, persisting a durable LSN checkpoint to stream_state.
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Package pgstreamrun is the PostgreSQL streaming CONSUMER: it drives the internal/pgcapture capturer (the producer) into the shared indexer, persisting a durable LSN checkpoint to stream_state. |
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pgverifysource
Package pgverifysource is the PostgreSQL live-source provider for internal/verify (#1024): the PG-native table checksum plus the pinned connection and the verify.PGSourceChecksum factory that wires it.
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Package pgverifysource is the PostgreSQL live-source provider for internal/verify (#1024): the PG-native table checksum plus the pinned connection and the verify.PGSourceChecksum factory that wires it. |
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query
Package query implements the binlog_events query engine — dynamic SQL construction from filter options and multi-format result rendering.
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Package query implements the binlog_events query engine — dynamic SQL construction from filter options and multi-format result rendering. |
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reconstruct
Package reconstruct implements row state reconstruction by combining baseline Parquet snapshots with indexed binlog change events.
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Package reconstruct implements row state reconstruction by combining baseline Parquet snapshots with indexed binlog change events. |
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recovery
Package recovery generates reversal SQL from indexed binlog events.
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Package recovery generates reversal SQL from indexed binlog events. |
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serverid
Package serverid manages persistent server identities for bintrail.
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Package serverid manages persistent server identities for bintrail. |
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shim
Package shim implements an in-process MySQL-protocol server that answers time-travel queries by translating them into bintrail's existing query engine.
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Package shim implements an in-process MySQL-protocol server that answers time-travel queries by translating them into bintrail's existing query engine. |
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status
Package status provides shared types and display helpers for the binlog index status.
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Package status provides shared types and display helpers for the binlog index status. |
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storage
Package storage defines an abstract storage backend interface for managing Parquet files and other binary objects.
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Package storage defines an abstract storage backend interface for managing Parquet files and other binary objects. |
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streamdeps
Package streamdeps wires the production helper functions into a streamrun.Deps — the host side of streamrun's dependency-injection seam.
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Package streamdeps wires the production helper functions into a streamrun.Deps — the host side of streamrun's dependency-injection seam. |
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telemetry
Package telemetry implements bintrail's usage telemetry: a metadata-only, spool-based reporter for command mix and error classes.
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Package telemetry implements bintrail's usage telemetry: a metadata-only, spool-based reporter for command mix and error classes. |
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testutil
Package testutil provides shared helpers for integration tests that require a live MySQL connection.
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Package testutil provides shared helpers for integration tests that require a live MySQL connection. |
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verify
Package verify reconstructs each table's state from baseline + binlog and compares its content fingerprint against the live source, proving that a recovery would reproduce the source.
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Package verify reconstructs each table's state from baseline + binlog and compares its content fingerprint against the live source, proving that a recovery would reproduce the source. |
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views
Package views generates DuckDB view definitions over a bintrail archive layout.
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Package views generates DuckDB view definitions over a bintrail archive layout. |
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test
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e2e
Package e2e holds the full-pipeline end-to-end test for the bintrail CLI (init → snapshot → index → query → recover → status → rotate).
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Package e2e holds the full-pipeline end-to-end test for the bintrail CLI (init → snapshot → index → query → recover → status → rotate). |
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shim
Package shim_e2e holds the docker-compose-driven end-to-end test for `bintrail shim`.
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Package shim_e2e holds the docker-compose-driven end-to-end test for `bintrail shim`. |
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