parallel tree recursion

[Matt McCutchen]

On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 00:56 +0100, Christoph Biedl wrote:
> Phil Howard wrote...
> > It would also be nice if rsync didn't have to collect the entire tree in
> > RAM all at once, but instead, both source and destination could recurse
> > their respective trees in sync with each other and copy, create, delete,
> > as things go through that parallel recursion.
> 
> I'm not sure, perhaps hard link preservation would cause some headache
> here. But as long as you're not using -H at all, there shouldn't be a
> principal problem.

Actually, there is a problem.  The file list has to be transferred
before the receiving rsync forks into a receiver and a generator so that
both have identical copies of the file list.  I can envision a design in
which the receiving rsync makes a generator that gradually receives the
file list and sends copies of the necessary information to the receiver,
but it would take significant work to implement this.
-- 
Matt McCutchen, ``hashproduct''
hashproduct at verizon.net -- http://hashproduct.metaesthetics.net/