Thanks, I had a hunch that I have to rely on such messy work-around. It is extremely inconvenient and insecure approach though, because the sqlite is saved without any encryption and password. I did it that way, but I had to do some manual work to securely transfer the backup file to the destination machine.
If you don’t mind me saying, imho, this does not sound like a solution, but rather a relatively messy work-around. A proper solution would be something akin to transferring the information that QR code is suppose to convey rather than relying on taking a backup and transferring it. As you might already know, generating and transferring backup can get problematic [example].
I don’t know where is the best place to propose this, but I believe the short-term best approach is to encrypt the tar backup file based on symmetric encryption. For example:
- Delta Chat client can ask for a password
- generate tar file
- symmetrically encrypt it
tar czf - file1.txt file2.pdf file3.jpg \ | gpg --symmetric --cipher-algo aes256 -o backup-file.tar.gz - tell the user where to find the backup file
- user transfers it to the other computer (e.g., via email or a messenger or magic-wormhole)
- on Desktop client user give the backup file to the client
- Desktop client asks for the encryption password
- the Desktop client open the backup, do what it is supposed to do to set things up
- upon success, inform user to delete the backup from their phone and their computer and their messenger
This is how Signal also handles transferring the backup as far as I can remember.
Of course it would extra good if the Delta Chat can internally handle uploading to magic wormhole, but that’s a discussion for another day.