using rsync with Mac OS X

[Chris Garrigues]

> From:  Mark Valence <kurash at sassafras.com>
> Date:  Sun, 16 Dec 2001 22:26:04 -0500
>
> 1) convert (on the fly) all files to MacBinary before 
> comparing/sending them to the destination.  MacBinary is a well 
> documented way to package an HFS file into a single data file.  The 
> benefits with this method are compatibility with existing rsync 
> versions that are not MacBinary aware, while the drawbacks are speed, 
> maintainability, and that directory metadata is not addressed at all.
> 
> 2) Treat the two forks and metadata as three separate files for the 
> purposes of comparison/sending, and then reassemble them on the 
> destination.  Same drawbacks and benefits of the MacBinary route. 
> This would also take more memory (potentially three times the number 
> of files in the flist).
> 
> 3) Change the protocol and implementation to handle arbitrary 
> metadata and multiple forks.  This could be made sort-of compatible 
> with existing rsync's by using various tricks, but the most efficient 
> way would be to alter the protocol.  Benefits are that this would 
> make the protocol extensible.  Metadata can be "tagged" so that you 
> could add any values needed, and ignore those tags that are not 
> understood or supported.  Any number of forks could be supported, 
> which gives a step up in supporting NTFS where a file can have any 
> number of "data streams".  In fact, forks and metadata could all be 
> done in the same way in the protocol.

A quick thought about implementation details:  It would be nice if this were 
done in such a way that if I were to rsync from a non-OSX netatalk system
onto an OSX system the .AppleDouble directories would be merged back into the 
files, and conversely if I were to rsync from an OSX system to a netatalk 
system the resource forks would be split into .AppleDouble directories.

I guess this would be simplest with scheme 2 above.

Chris

-- 
Chris Garrigues                 http://www.DeepEddy.Com/~cwg/
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