restoring individual files from backup

> I would like to recover a directory which I deleted from my Desktop
> directory several months ago. My understanding is that I should be
> able to do this in Caja by right clicking and selecting "Restore
> Missing Files..." When I do this, a window pops up which says that it
> is scanning for files, but it does not find any. My expectation was
> that I would be prompted for my Hyperbola user's password, followed by
> the encryption password for the backup, which is what happens when I
> do a full backup or a full restore.

It seems that the Hyperbola user's password gets cached, which is why I
am not always prompted for it, so there must be some other reason that
"Restore Missing Files..." does not work. However, I found that "Revert
to a Previous Version..." does work, so I was able to revert my entire
Desktop directory to a snapshot from before I deleted the files I need. I
then copied those files to another directory and reverted back to my
most recent snapshot. This took longer than it should have to restore
just the files I needed, but it worked.

I missed that post: sorry. I actually faced the same problem (Déjà Dup taking apparently forever to restore a past version of a file) some time ago, using Nautilus. I do not remember how I solved it. Maybe running deja-dup from the command line (since I imagine it is the first thing I would try)? Also, more often than not, Déjà Dup pops an error up when I plug the hard drive where to back the files up: I then need to manually start it.

As you know, Trisquel 9 Alpha has Back In Time, instead of Déjà Dup. It uses rsync, whereas Déjà Dup uses duplicity. As far as I can see:

• Back In Time is less user friendly than Déjà Dup: no integration with the file manager, a rather user-frightening (compared to Déjà-Dup) Qt interface, which does not integrate well with GTK-based desktop environments (such as MATE, Trisquel's default);
• Back In Time (actually rsync) is less powerful than Déjà Dup (actually duplicity): no differential update (large files that are slightly modified are copied as a whole), no compression, etc.
• As a counterpart of the previous point, Back In Time looks "simple" (as in KISS): it is fast and you can directly copy a file (or a whole snapshot) from wherever you backed it up.

I believed the rather detrimental change was justified by Déjà Dup (and possibly duplicity) not being maintained: we were doomed to suffer from its bugs for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, I discovered it is not the case:

• duplicity is essentially releasing a (minor) version per month: https://launchpad.net/duplicity/+download
• Déjà Dup looks well alive too: see, for instance, https://mail.gnome.org/archives/deja-dup-list/2019-October/msg00009.html published less than three months ago.

Do you know if Déjà Dup was tested again for Trisquel 9? Were the bugs still present? If not, what justified the the choice of Back In Time? Is that choice definitive?