patch to enable faster mirroring of large filesystems

[Martin Pool]

On 20 Nov 2001, Dave Dykstra <dwd at bell-labs.com> wrote:

> > And, by the way, even if the batch stuff accomplishes the same performance
> > gains, I would still argue that the "--files-from" type of behavior
> > that I implemented is a nice transparent interface that people might
> > like to have.  The ability to pipe in output from gfind -print0 opens
> > up some possibilities.
> 
> Yes, many people have argued that a --files-from type of option is
> desirable and I agree.

I agree too.  I think there would certainly be no argument with taking
a patch that did only that.  (Except that it makes the option list
even more ridiculously bloated.)

I think a better fix is to transfer directories one by one, pipelined,
rather than walking the whole tree upfront.  This will take a protocol
change and a fair amount of work, but I think it is possible.  If we
can get it to just work faster transparently that is better.

> > The batch stuff is definitely more confusing, since
> > neither you nor I is quite sure what it does yet...

It's basically like xdelta: you can write out a description of the
changes and then apply it later, possibly transferring it by some
other mechanism.

--
Martin