Find similarity between local and remote file before transferring

[niels at myplace.dk]

> Rsync currently doesn't do that.

That explains why I couldn't find anything usable on the man-page. :)

> Would it suit your purposes if 'rsync -n'
> reported the statistics of what it would transfer if -n were not used
> rather that what it reports now (which appears to be the number of 
> bytes it actually transfers rather than what it would transfer 
> without -n)?

Yes, that would be perfect for one of the purposes.
But I think this functionality should be set with another option, so we keep rsync backwards compatible. I don't really care, but some might would. :)

> I think that's been asked for but nobody ever made a patch.

Okay, then I'm not the only one. :)
I don't know exactly how the protocol works, but I can imagine that it's a simple patch. It's just to pretend to be downloading, but every time the client sees a part that need to be downloaded, it tells the server that it allready has the part, and then just note the size.
That must be pretty simple. I think... :)

My interest right now is only for connecting to an rsync daemon for downloading files. I don't know if it makes it easier. :)

I'd be very happy if someone would make this patch.
It's for my rsync frontend, which I hope will help telling the world that rsync is a great way of downloading files, and it should be used some more. :)

/Niels Andersen

(Sorry about the late answer, technical problems with my workstation...)