Request for a new feature

[Paulo da Silva]

Hello rsync list subscribers!

I posted the message I'm resending below some time ago to mbp.
I didn't get any response. A couple of days ago, I found it in this list 
using
Google.

I also could read a response there about using zlibc. I think zlibc does not
do what I want. 1st. it is a readonly system. 2nd. it does not deals with
links very well. rsync is very appropriate to copy a whole disk, including
the root. We can also use a compress flag to get files compressed before
being sent thru a communication mean. I think that small changes, for those
who know the program internals, could increase it's power by allowing files
to be left compressed on the destination.

For example, I have a mirror of my system disk. Unfortunateley, I need to
have it decompressed. This takes a lot of space. I only need it to restore
my working disk. I could have it compressed if rsync allowed me to do that.

So, I decided to subscribe the list and repost the message in
the hope it deserves some comments from you. Thanks.

__________________________________________________________________

Hi.

1st. of all thank you for mantaining this very useful program.
It helps me a lot in a lot of tasks that would be otherwise very
tedious and time consuming.

However, I think that a small feature could make it yet more
powerfull when used as a backup tool.
The idea was to have a switch so that files could be kept
compressed at the destination. These compressed files could
be then restored the same way specifing a switch telling that
source files are to be uncompressed.
Files with known extensions (.gz, .zip, ...) should not be
compressed/uncompressed.
All files must keep the original names unchanged.

Ex.
   export RSYNC_COMPRESSED_EXTS=".gz .zip ..." ;# Extensions from files 
not to be compressed
Backup:
   rsync -av --delete --zip MyDir/ BackupDir
Restore:
   rsync -av --delete --unzip BackupDir/ MyDir

This is only a sugestion. You may find a better solution.

Thank you.
Paulo da Silva