1 NEWS for rsync 3.0.0 (UNRELEASED)
5 NOTABLE CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR:
7 - The handling of implied directories when using --relative has changed to
8 send them as directories (e.g. no implied dir is ever sent as a symlink).
9 This avoids unexpected behavior and should not adversely affect most
10 people. If you're one of those rare individuals who relied upon having
11 an implied dir be duplicated as a symlink, you should specify the
12 transfer of the symlink and the transfer of the referent directory as
13 separate args. (See also --keep-dirlinks and --no-implied-dirs.)
15 - Requesting a remote file list without specifying -r (--recursive) now
16 sends the -d (--dirs) option to the remote rsync rather than sending -r
17 along with an extra exclude of /*/*. If the remote rsync does not
18 understand the -d option (i.e. it is 2.6.3 or older), you will need to
19 either turn off -d (--no-d), or specify -r --exclude='/*/*' manually.
21 - In --dry-run mode, the last line of the verbose summary text is output
22 with a "(DRY RUN)" suffix to help remind you that no updates were made.
26 - Fixed the output of -ii when combined with one of the --*-dest options:
27 it now itemizes all the items, not just the changed ones.
29 - Made the output of all file types consistent when using a --*-dest
30 option. Prior versions would output too many creation events for
33 - The code that waits for a child pid now handles being interrupted by a
34 signal. This fixes a problem with the pre-xfer exec function not being
35 able to get the exit status from the script.
37 - A negated filter rule (i.e. with a '!' modifier) no longer loses the
38 negation when sending the filter rules to the remote rsync.
40 - Fixed a problem with the --out-format (aka --log-format) option %f: it
41 no longer outputs superfluous directory info for a non-daemon rsync.
43 - Fixed a problem with -vv (double --verbose) and --stats when "pushing"
44 files (which includes local copies). Version 2.6.9 would complete the
45 copy, but exit with an error when the receiver output its memory stats.
47 - If --password-file is used on a non-daemon transfer, rsync now complains
48 and exits. This should help users figure out that they can't use this
49 option to control a remote shell's password prompt.
51 - Make sure that directory permissions of a newly-created destination
52 directory are handled right when --perms is left off.
54 - The itemized output of a newly-created destination directory is now
55 output as a creation event, not a change event.
57 - Improved --hard-link so that more corner cases are handled correctly
58 when combined with options such as --link-dest and/or --ignore-existing.
60 - The --append option no longer updates a file that has the same size.
62 - Fixed a bug when combining --backup and --backup-dir with --inplace:
63 any missing backup directories are now created.
65 - Fixed a bug when using --backup and --inplace with --whole-file or
66 --read-batch: backup files are actually created now.
68 - Starting up an extra copy of an rsync daemon will not clobber the pidfile
69 for the running daemon -- if the pidfile exists, the new daemon will exit
72 - The daemon pidfile is checked and created sooner in the startup sequence.
74 - If a daemon module's "path" value is not an absolute pathname, the code
75 now makes it absolute internally (making it work properly).
77 - Ensure that a temporary file always has owner-write permission while we
78 are writing to it. This avoids problems with some network filesystems.
80 - Any errors output about password-file reading no longer cause an error at
81 the end of the run about a partial transfer.
85 - A new incremental-recursion algorithm is now used when rsync is talking
86 to another 3.x version. This starts the transfer going more quickly
87 (before all the files have been found), and requires much less memory.
88 See the --recursive option in the manpage for some restrictions.
90 - Lowered memory use in the non-incremental-recursion algorithm for typical
91 option values (usually saving from 21-29 bytes per file).
93 - The default --delete algorithm is now --delete-during when talking to a
94 3.x rsync. This is a faster scan than using --delete-before (which is
95 the default when talking to older rsync versions), and is compatible with
96 the new incremental recursion mode.
98 - Rsync now allows multiple remote-source args to be specified rather than
99 having to rely on a special space-splitting side-effect of the remote-
100 shell. Additional remote args must specify the same host or an empty one
101 (e.g. empty: :file1 or ::module/file2). This means that local use of
102 brace expansion now works: rsync -av host:dir/{f1,f2} .
104 - Added the --protect-args (-s) option, that tells rsync to send most of
105 the command-line args at the start of the transfer rather than as args
106 to the remote-shell command. This protects them from space-splitting,
107 and only interprets basic wildcard special shell characters (*?[).
109 - Added the --delete-delay option, which is a more efficient way to delete
110 files at the end of the transfer without needing a separate delete pass.
112 - Added the --acls (-A) option to preserve Access Control Lists. This is
113 an improved version of the prior patch that was available, and it even
114 supports OS X ACLs. If you need to have backward compatibility with old,
115 acl-patched versions of rsync, apply the acls.diff file from the patches
118 - Added the --xattrs (-X) option to preserver extended attributes. This is
119 an improved version of the prior patch that was available, and it even
120 supports OS X xattrs (which includes their resource fork data). If you
121 need to have backward compatibility with old, xattr-patched versions of
122 rsync, apply the xattrs.diff file from the patches dir.
124 - Added the --fake-super option that allows a non-super user to preserve
125 all attributes of a file by using a special extended-attribute idiom.
126 It even supports the storing of foreign ACL data on your backup server.
127 There is also an analogous "fake super" option for an rsync daemon.
129 - Added the --iconv option, which allows rsync to convert filenames from
130 one character-set to another during the transfer. The default is to make
131 this feature available as long as your system has iconv_open(). If
132 compilation fails, specify --disable-iconv to configure, and then
133 rebuild. If you want rsync to perform character-set conversions by
134 default, you can specify --enable-iconv=CONVERT_STRING with the default
135 value for the --iconv option that you wish to use. For example,
136 "--enable-iconv=." is a good choice. See the rsync manpage for an
137 explanation of the --iconv option's settings.
139 - Added the --skip-compress=LIST option to override the default list of
140 file suffixes that will not be compressed when using --compress.
142 - The daemon's default for "dont compress" was extended to include:
143 *.7z *.mp[34] *.mov *.avi *.ogg *.jpg *.jpeg
144 The matching routine was also optimized to run more quickly.
146 - The --max-delete option now outputs a warning if it skipped any file
147 deletions, including a count of how many deletions were skipped. (Older
148 versions just silently stopped deleting things.)
150 - You may specify --max-delete=0 to a 3.0.0 client to request that it warn
151 about extraneous files without deleting anything. If you're not sure
152 what version the client is, you can use the less-obvious --max-delete=-1,
153 as both old and new versions will treat that as the same request (though
154 older versions don't warn).
156 - The --hard-link option now uses less memory on both the sending and
157 receiving side for all protocol versions. For protocol 30, the use of a
158 hashtable on the sending side allows us to more efficiently convey to the
159 receiver what files are linked together. This reduces the amount of data
160 sent over the socket by a considerable margin (rather than adding more
161 data), and limits the in-memory storage of the device+inode information
162 to just the sending side for the new protocol 30, or to the receiving
163 side when speaking an older protocol (note that older rsync versions kept
164 the device+inode information on both sides).
166 - The filter rules now support a perishable ("p") modifier that marks rules
167 that should not have an effect in a directory that is being deleted. e.g.
168 -f '-p .svn/' would only affect "live" .svn directories.
170 - If we get an error setting the time on a symlink, we don't complain about
171 it anymore (since some operating systems don't support that, and it's not
174 - Protocol 30 now uses MD5 checksums instead of MD4.
176 - Changed the --append option to not checksum the existing data in the
177 destination file, which speeds up file appending.
179 - Added the --append-verify option, which works like the older --append
180 option (verifying the existing data in the destination file). For
181 compatibility with older rsync versions, any use of --append that is
182 talking protocol 29 or older will revert to the --append-verify method.
184 - Documented and extended the support for the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG variable
185 that can be used to enhance the client side of a daemon connection.
187 - Improved the dashes and double-quotes in the nroff manpage output.
189 - We now support a lot more --no-OPTION override options.
193 - The file-list sorting algorithm now uses a sort that keeps any same-
194 named items in the same order as they were specified. This allows
195 rsync to always ensure that the first of the duplicates is the one
196 that will be included in the copy. The new sort was also faster
197 than the glibc version of qsort() and mergesort() in my testing.
199 - Rsync now supports the transfer of 64-bit timestamps (time_t values).
201 - Fixed a build problem with older (2.x) versions of gcc.
203 - Added some isType() functions that make dealing with signed characters
204 easier without forcing variables via casts.
206 - Changed strcat/strcpy/sprintf function calls to use safer versions.
208 - Upgraded the included popt version to 1.10.2 and improved its use of
209 string-handling functions.
211 - Added missing prototypes for compatibility functions from the lib dir.
213 - Configure determines if iconv() has a const arg, allowing us to avoid a
216 - Made the sending of some numbers more efficient for protocol 30.
218 - Make sure that a daemon process doesn't mind if the client was weird and
219 omitted the --server option.
221 - Improved the use of "const" on pointers.
223 - Improved J.W.'s pool_alloc routines to add a way of freeing older
224 sections of a pool's memory.
226 - The getaddrinfo.c compatibility code in the "lib" dir was replaced with
227 some new code (derived from samba, derived from PostgreSQL) that has a
228 better license than the old code.
232 - Rsync is now licensed under the GPLv3 or later.
234 - When running the tests, we now put our per-test temp dirs into a sub-
235 directory named testtmp (which is created, if missing). This allows
236 someone to symlink the testtmp directory to another filesystem (which is
237 useful if the build dir's filesystem does not support ACLs and xattrs,
238 but another file system does).
240 - Rsync now has a way of handling protocol-version changes during the
241 development of a new protocol version. This causes any out-of-sync
242 versions to speak an older protocol rather than fail in a cryptic manner.
243 This addition makes it safe to deploy a pre-release version that may
244 interact with the public. This new exchange of sub-version info does not
245 interfere with the {MIN,MAX}_PROTOCOL_VERSION checking algorithm (which
246 does not have enough range to allow the main protocol number to be
247 incremented for every minor tweak in that happens during development).