[Bug 8990] It might be nice to make --append-verify also transfer non-appending files

[samba-bugs at samba.org]

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8990

Wayne Davison <wayned at samba.org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED
            Summary|--append-verify doesn't     |It might be nice to make
                   |spot file differences, even |--append-verify also
                   |with --checksum             |transfer non-appending
                   |                            |files
           Severity|normal                      |enhancement

--- Comment #1 from Wayne Davison <wayned at samba.org> 2012-06-16 17:03:30 UTC ---
The way append currently works is that it only transfers files that have data
to append.  From the manpage:

"If a file needs to be transferred and its size on the receiver is
the same or longer than the size on the sender, the file is skipped."

Thus, it is assumed that if you are using --append (or --append-verify) that
you have narrowed down your transfer list to just files that need to be
appended and that you know have unchanged data prior to the append bits.

It might be nice to allow rsync to do a non-appending transfer for any files it
finds that have a non-longer length (possibly only with --append-verify).  Such
a feature would require some way to alert the sender what kind of file is
currently being processed (possibly using the sum data fields), and that is not
currently possible.  I'm thinking that we don't want to do that with --append
because it is already dangerous if your transfer list is not limited to just
the files that are known good besides needing some appending.  The
--append-verify option is already telling rsync that you aren't sure about the
files, so it might be nice if that option also mode did more updating work. 
However, such a change would be incompatible with older rsyncs and is not
currently planned.

I'll change this into an enhancement request for future consideration.

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