state of the rsync nation? (revisited 6/2003 from 11/2000)

[Martin Pool]

On  9 Jun 2003, Brad Hards <bhards at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Sun, 8 Jun 2003 15:43 pm, Donovan Baarda wrote:
> > The comments about rsync never using libhsync/librsync are still true
> > for the foreseeable future. There are many things rsync includes that
> > are still missing from librsync, and the rsync implementation is very
> > tightly coupled, with many backwards compatibility issues. Even when
> > librsync reaches the point of being as good or better than rsync at
> > signature/delta/patch calculation, it would be a major task to "fit it
> > into" rsync.

> The downside to not having a library that is wire-compatible with rsync 
> - --daemon is that it is damn difficult to write something that works as a VFS 
> / kioslave type device. I had a hack at this, by wrapping the rsync 
> executable, and it worked a bit, but it was way too fragile for any real use:
> http://www.cuneata.net/rsync-kio.html

I guess the reason why you're interested in doing it is so that you
can browse public rsync mirrors from Konqueror/whatever?

Speaking only for myself, I don't think this is worth spending time
on.  It would be hard to write a wire-compatible library, and hard to
refactor rsync into such a library.

Not only might a new tool be written more easily without baggage, it
might also (in a couple of years) persuade people running mirror sites
to switch.  I know many of them are unhappy with rsync at the moment:

 - large memory usage
 - no really good ways to restrict client usage
 - ...

-- 
Martin