Widespread implementation of rsync

Dave Dykstra dwd at bell-labs.com
Wed Oct 31 01:56:22 EST 2001


On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 08:34:14PM +0500, Java Dukes wrote:
> I came to know about rsync algorithm for transferring files few days
> ago.  The algorithm provides an efficient way to transfer files from one
> computer to another over a slow communication link. But I have been
> wondering why  don't we see a widespread implementation of rsync in most
> popular file transfer tools.
> 
> I know that the algorithm was conceived by Andrew Tridgell and Paul
> Mackerras from Department of Computer Science, Australian National
> University. I was thinking about implementing this algorithm in Java and
> make it available as a freeware/shareware. I guess I would need some kind
> of permission/license to develop a program that uses rsync.

I know there's no patent on it, and other people have done implementations.
The "resources" page on rsync.samba.org points to a REXX implementation.
Josh Macdonald wrote an implementation in C
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdelta/
and Martin Pool has turned it into a library in C (I don't see where the
home page is -- Martin?).  I believe somebody else had talked about a java
implementation but never actually did it.

- Dave Dykstra




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