rsync/NEWS

NEWS for rsync 2.6.4 (UNRELEASED)
Protocol: 29 (changed)
Changes since 2.6.3:

  OUTPUT CHANGES:

    - When rsync deletes a directory and outputs a verbose message about
      it, it now appends a trailing slash to the name instead of (only
      sometimes) outputting a preceding "directory " string.

    - The --stats output will contain file-list time-statistics if both
      sides are 2.6.4, or if the local side is 2.6.4 and the files are
      being pushed (since the stats come from the sending side).
      (Requires protocol 29 for a pull.)

    - The "%o" (operation) value now has a third value besides "send" and
      "recv": "del." (with trailing dot to make it 4 chars).  This changes
      the way deletions are logged in the daemon's log file.
  
  BUG FIXES:

    - Restore the list-clearing behavior of "!" in a .cvsignore file (2.6.3
      was only treating it as a special token in an rsync include/exclude
      file).

    - The combination of --verbose and --dry-run now mentions the full list
      of changes that would be output without --dry-run.

    - Avoid a mkdir warning when removing a directory in the destination
      that already exists in the --backup-dir.

    - An OS that has a binary mode for its files (such as cygwin0 needed
      setmode(fd, O_BINARY) called on the temp-file we opened with
      mkstemp().  (Fix derived from the Cygwin's 2.6.3 rsync package.)

    - Fixed a potential hang when verbosity is high, the client side is
      the sender, and the file-list is large.

    - We now check if the OS doesn't support using mknod() for creating
      FIFOs and sockets, and compile-in using mkfifo() and socket() when
      necessary.

    - Fixed an off-by-one error in the handling of --max-delete=N.

    - One place in the code wasn't checking if fork() failed.

    - The "ignore nonreadable" daemon parameter used to erroneously affect
      symlinks that pointed to a non-existent file.  This has been fixed.

    - If the OS does not have lchown() and its chown() tries to set the
      referent of a symlink (as it should), we no longer try to set the
      user and group of a symlink.

    - The generator now properly runs the hard-link loop and the dir-time
      rewriting loop after we're sure that the redo phase is complete.

    - When --backup was specified with --partial-dir=DIR (where DIR is a
      relative path), the backup code was erroneously trying to backup a
      file that was put into the partial-dir.

    - One call to flush_write_file() was not being checked for an error.

    - The --no-relative option was not being sent from the client to a
      server sender.

    - If an rsync daemon specified "dont compress = ..." for a file and the
      client tried to specify --compress, the libz code was not handling a
      compression level of 0 properly.  This could cause a transfer failure
      if the block-size for a file was large enough (i.e. rsync might have
      exited with an error for large files).

    - Fixed a bug that would sometimes surface when using --compress and
      sending a file with a block-size larger than 64K (either manually
      specified, or computed due to the file being really large).  Prior
      versions of rsync would sometimes fail to to decompress the data
      properly, and thus the transferred file would fail its verification.

    - If a daemon can't open the specified log file (i.e. syslog is not
      being used), die without crashing.  We also output an error about
      the failure on stderr (which will only be seen if --no-detach was
      specified).

    - A local transfer no longer duplicates all its include/exclude options
      (since the forked process already has a copy of the exclude list,
      there's no need to send them a set of duplicates).

    - When --progress is specified, the output of items that the generator
      is creating (e.g. dirs, symlinks) is now integrated into the progress
      output without overlapping it.

  ENHANCEMENTS:

    - Rsync now supports popt's option aliases, which means that you can
      use /etc/popt and/or ~/.popt to create your own option aliases.

    - Added the --delete-during (--del) option which will delete files
      from on the receiving side incrementally as each directory in the
      transfer is being processed.  This makes it more efficient than the
      default, before-the-transfer behavior, which is now available as
      --delete-before (this is the default --delete-WHEN option that will
      be chosen if --delete or --delete-excluded is specified without a
      --delete-WHEN choice).  All the --del* options infer --delete, so an
      rsync daemon that refuses "delete" will still refuse to allow any
      file-deleting options.

    - All the --delete-WHEN options are now more memory efficient:
      Previously an entire duplicate set of file-list objects was created
      on the receiving side for the entire destination hierarchy.  The new
      algorithm only creates one directory of objects at a time.

    - Added the --copy-dest option, which works like --link-dest except
      that it includes copies of identical files.

    - Added support for specifying multiple --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or
      --link-dest options, but only of a single type. (Promoted from the
      patches dir and enhanced.)

    - Added the --max-size option. (Promoted from the patches dir.)

    - The daemon-mode options were separated from the normal rsync options
      so that they can't be mixed together.  This makes it impossible to
      start a daemon that had improper default option values that could
      cause problems (e.g. a hang or an abort) when a client connects.

    - The --bwlimit option may now be used in combination with --daemon
      to specify both a default value for the daemon side and a value
      that cannot be exceeded by a user-specified --bwlimit option.

    - Added the "port" parameter to the rsyncd.conf file. (Promoted from
      the patches dir.)  Also added "address".  A command-line option
      will take precedence over a config-file option, as expected.

    - In _exit_cleanup(): when we are exiting with a partially-received
      file, we now flush any data in the write-cache before closing the
      partial file.

    - The --inplace support was enhanced to work with --compare-dest,
      --link-dest, and (the new) --copy-dest options. (Requires protocol
      29.)

    - Added the --dirs (-d) option for an easier way to copy directories
      without recursion.

    - Added the --list-only option which is mainly a way for the client to
      put the server into listing mode without needing to resort to any
      internal option kluges (e.g. the age-old use of "-r --exclude="/*/*"
      for a non-recursive listing).  This option is used automatically
      (behind the scenes) when a modern rsync speaks to a modern daemon,
      but may also be specified manually if you want to force the use of
      the --list-only option over a remote-shell connection.

    - Added the --omit-dir-times (-O) option which will avoid updating the
      modified time for directories when --times was specified.  This
      option will avoid an extra pass through the file-list at the end of
      the transfer (to tweak all the directory times), which can result in
      an appreciable speedup for a really large transfer. (Promoted from
      the patches dir.)

    - Added the --filter (-f) option and its helper option, -F.  Filter
      rules are an extension to the existing include/exclude handling
      that also supports nested filter files as well as per-directory
      filter files (like .cvsignore, but with full filter-rule parsing).
      This new option was chosen in order to ensure that all existing
      include/exclude processing remained 100% compatible with older
      versions.  Protocol 29 is needed for full filter-rule support, but
      backward-compatible rules work with earlier protocol versions.
      (Promoted from the patches dir and enhanced.)

    - Added the --delay-updates option that puts all updated files into
      a temporary directory (by default ".~tmp~", but settable via the
      --partial-dir=DIR option) until the end of the transfer.  This
      makes the updates a little more atomic for a large transfer.

    - If rsync is put into the background, any output from --progress is
      reduced.

    - Documented the "max verbosity" setting for rsyncd.conf.  (This
      setting was added a couple releases ago, but left undocumented.)

    - The sender and the generator now double-check the file-list index
      they are given, and refuse to try to do a file transfer on a
      non-file index (since that would indicate that something had gone
      very wrong).

    - Added the --itemize-changes (-i) option, which is a way to output a
      more detailed list of what files changed in any way and how they
      changed.  The effect is the same as specifying a --log-format of
      "%i %n%L" (see the rsyncd.conf manpage).  Works with --dry-run too.

    - Added the --fuzzy option, which attempts to find a basis file for a
      file that is being created from scratch.  The current algorithm
      only looks in the destination directory for the created file, but
      it does attempt to find a match based on size/mod-time (in case the
      file was renamed with no other changes) as well as based on a fuzzy
      name-matching algorithm.  This option requires protocol 29 because
      it needs the new file-sorting order.  (Promoted from patches dir
      and enhanced.)

    - Added the --remove-sent-files option, which lets you move files
      between systems.

    - When building under windows, the default for --daemon is now to
      avoid detaching, requiring the new --detach option to force rsync
      to detach.

    - Improved the option descriptions in the --help text.

  SUPPORT FILES:

    - Added atomic-rsync to the support dir: a perl script that will
      transfer some files using rsync, and then move the updated files into
      place all at once at the end of the transfer.  Only works when
      pulling, and uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files to
      effect its update.

    - Added mnt-excl to the support dir: a perl script that takes the
      /proc/mounts file and translates it into a set of excludes that will
      exclude all mount points (even mapped mounts to the same disk).  The
      excludes are made relative to the specified source dir and properly
      anchored.

    - Added savetransfer.c to the support dir: a C program that can make
      a copy of all the data that flows over the wire.  This lets you test
      for data corruption (by saving the data on both the sending side and
      the receiving side) or provides a way to help debug a protocol error.

    - Added rrsync to the support dir: this is my version of Joe Smith's
      restricted rsync perl script.  This helps to ensure that only certain
      rsync commands can be run by an ssh invocation.

  INTERNAL:

    - Added better checking of the checksum-header values that come over
      the socket.

    - Merged a variety of file-deleting functions into a single function so
      that it is easier to maintain.

    - Improved the type of some variables (particularly blocksize vars) for
      consistency and proper size.

    - Got rid of the uint64 type (which we didn't need).

    - Use a slightly more compatible set of core #include directives.

    - Defined int32 in a way that ensures that the build dies if we can't
      find a variable with at least 32 bits.

    - The daemon's "read only" config item now sets an internal read_only
      variable that makes extra sure that no write/delete calls on the
      read-only side can succeed.

  PROTOCOL DIFFERENCES FOR VERSION 29:

    - A 16-bit flag-word is transmitted after every file-list index.  This
      indicates what is changing between the sender and the receiver.  The
      generator now transmits an index and a flag-word to indicate when
      dirs and symlinks have changed (resorting to the old-style outputting
      of local change-messages for older protocols).

    - If --inplace is specified, the generator sends an extra byte after
      the flag-word indicating what kind of basis file is being used for
      the transfer (see the FNAMECMP_* defines).  This information is used
      to optimize the transfer when the basis file is not the destination.

    - The sending of exclude names is done using filter-rule syntax.  This
      means that all names have a prefixed rule indicator, even excludes
      (which used to be sent as a bare pattern, when possible).  The -C
      option will include the per-dir .cvsignore merge file in the list of
      filter rules so it is positioned correctly (unlike in some older
      transfer scenarios).

    - Rsync sorts the filename list in a different way: it sorts the subdir
      names after the non-subdir names for each dir's contents, and it
      always puts a dir's contents immediately after the dir's name in the
      list.  (Previously an item named "foo.txt" would sort in between
      directory "foo/" and "foo/bar".)

    - When talking to a protocol 29 rsync daemon, a list-only request
      is able to note this before the options are sent over the wire, and
      the new --list-only option is encluded in the options sent over the
      socket.

    - When the --stats bytes are sent over the wire (or stored in a batch),
      they now include two elapsed-time values: one for how long it took to
      build the file-list, and one for how long it took to send it over the
      wire (each expressed in thousandths of a second).

    - When --delete-excluded is specified with some filter rules (AKA
      excludes), a client sender will now initiate a send of the filter
      rules to the receiver (older protocols used to omit the sending of
      excludes in this situation since there were no receiver-specific
      rules that survived --delete-excluded back then).  Note that, as with
      all the filter-list sending, only items that are significant to the
      other side will actually be sent over the wire, so the filter-rule
      list is often empty in this scenario.

    - A protocol-29 batch file includes a bit for the setting of the --dirs
      option.  Also, the shell script created by --write-batch will use the
      --filter option instead of --exclude-from to capture any filter rules.

  BUILD CHANGES:

    - Handle an operating system that use mkdev() in place of makedev().

    - Improved configure to better handle cross-compiling.