rbcp

robocopy's robustness & performance with modern I/O & convenience

rbcp is a modern wrapper around robocopy that combines the efficiency and robustness of the time-tested Windows robocopy tool with a clean, user-friendly interface and compact output.

Some glyphs are not rendered properly in the GIF, they depend on you having a nerd font installed (for e.g. -->)
_{BTW, this is cmd.exe running clink, turbocharging everything from the oh-my-posh prompt to the autocompletion and the syntax highlighting.}

Feature Highlights

• 🐚 Familiar unix cp input syntax
• 🚀 Modern real-time progress bar
• 📊 Clean, concise output format with important stats highlighted
• 🛡️ Preserves robocopy's legendary reliability
• 🎯 Smart defaults for general operation
• 🌟 Brace expansions, glob expansion and many more (powered by mvdan/sh)
• 📈 Detailed statistics and performance metrics
• 🔄 Mirror mode support
• 🏃 Dry-run capability (i.e. list only, no copy)

Installation

Download a binary from the latest release.

OR

Install using go:

go install github.com/plutonium-239/rbcp@latest

Usage

Basic syntax:

rbcp SOURCE DESTINATION [OPTIONS]

Syntax - just use linux/cp syntax

copying file(s) in the current working directory:	rbcp C:\source\readme.md D:\destination
You can also omit the path if it is the CWD:	rbcp readme.md D:\destination
Copy multiple files:	rbcp readme.md snippets.md d:/destination/
Glob expansion	rbcp C:/source/log_*.txt d:/destination/
Brace expansion The bash ./a_{1,2} brace expansion syntax is also supported:	rbcp C:/source/{readme.md,snippets.md} D:\destination rbcp log_{1,2}.txt d:/destination/

Caution

{/} and , are valid characters in file paths in windows, so there might exist files with the exact path that you input, i.e. C:/source/test{1,2} itself is a file name (albeit very rarely, mostly only GUIDs and temp files). In these cases, rbcp will try and detect if such a file exists and ask for confirmation if you still want to continue. This is a limitation that can be solved by using a different syntax and can be discussed here.

Mirror directories:

rbcp C:\source D:\destination -m
rbcp C:\source D:\destination --mir

Dry run (list only):

rbcp C:\source D:\destination -l
rbcp C:\source D:\destination --list

Command Line Options

• -m, --mir: Mirror mode (equivalent to robocopy's /MIR)
• -l, --list: List-only mode (dry run)
• --insane: Disable sane defaults (currently sets #retries to 2 and timeout between them to 1 sec)
• -p, --preserve-exitcode: Preserve robocopy's original exit code. By default, exit with code 0 on success and passthrough on copy failures.
• Additional robocopy arguments can be passed directly to --passthrough/-[.

Features

Modern I/O: (Input) Familiar linux cp syntax

• Robocopy's syntax is inconvenient
• Auto-suggest of any kind will not be able to suggest the right files
• Makes more sense to learn a unified syntax applicable globally

Modern I/O: (Output) Clean formatted output & completion summary

• Highlighted stats for a quick overview
• Hides skipped/mismatch/etc. when not present
• Summary includes:
  • Files copied/skipped
  • Directories processed
  • Total data transferred
  • Transfer speed
  • Duration
  • Status of any failures or mismatches
  • Exit code of robocopy with a brief explanation

Refer to the demo GIF at the top.

Smart Defaults

• Optimized retry settings (# of retries /R:2 and timeout between them /W:1 second)
• Automatic terminal width detection

Real-time Progress

• Live progress bar showing:
  • Overall progress in files/bytes
  • Current file being copied
  • Remaining files/bytes

Exit Codes

The tool maintains compatibility with robocopy's exit codes while providing a more user-friendly interpretation:

• 0: No errors
• 1: One or more files copied successfully
• 2: Extra files or directories detected
• 4: Mismatched files or directories found
• 8: Some files or directories could not be copied
• 16: Serious error - no files copied

Note: By default, non-error exit codes (< 8) are converted to 0 unless --preserve-exitcode is used.

Environment Variables

• LOGLEVEL: Set logging verbosity level
• COLUMNS: Override terminal width detection

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

Author

Created by plutonium-239

Acknowledgments

Built on top of the robust robocopy tool, with modern UI elements powered by:

• Charm libraries for terminal UI
• go-arg for argument parsing