FW: rsync performance

[Jim Salter]

> I'm sorry that you find rsync's local performance
> disappointing but that isn't what rsync is really for.
> If you do find specific enhancements that can be made that
> won't adversely affect portability we'd be glad to hear of
> them.

JW - one thing that occurs to me is to wonder if it would be possible to
implement an RSYNC switch to allow use of a different utility for actual
file copying... for example, the SMBFS implementation under FreeBSD is
hideously broken and buggy for large copying operations, whereas smbclient
works beautifully.  It would be *incredibly* useful if it were possible to
use rsync's file comparison engine with alternate file *transfer* methods,
such as for instance getting file names, sizes, and dates using smbclient or
ftp, deciding which ones needed updating normally, and then again using
smbclient or ftp to perform the actual updates - presumably only by whole
file replacement, as obviously getting checksums wouldn't be reasonable.

I understand that you may not be interested / your immediate reaction might
be "that's not what rsync is for", but further modularizing the design to
allow for alternate file transfer methods would be very, very, very, very
useful in an awful lot of situations.

Thanks for listening.

Jim Salter
JRS System Solutions