GZIP, ZIP, ISO, RPM files and rsync, tar, cpio

[Jacobus Erasmus]

I noticed with rsync and compressed files or package files the transfer
efficiency drops considerably. Eg. rsync an ISO image of a distribution
will give you between 30% and 60% of the original transfer although from
Beta1-Beta2 the change could not have been that great. The same thing
happens with ZIP files for obvious reasons.

My question or feature request if you want to call it is. Is it possible
to modify or add a feature to rsync that would allow it to for example
(decompress a gz file, unpackage an RPM file) through say a config file
specifying the necessary steps and repackage and compress the file on
the other side. This would make it possible to transfer eg. ISO images
considerably faster but would make the complexity of setup obviously
pretty high. 

Just a question.

-- 
Jacobus Erasmus <jacobus at kewlconcepts.co.za>
Kewlconcepts