--fuzzy, enhancement idea

[Moshe Jacobson]

Hi (Wayne?  Not sure who did --fuzzy),

Like many people, I use rsync with hard linking to keep multiple
backups of my data in a relatively small space on the server.

I like the idea behind --fuzzy, but it seems that in most cases, this
option doesn't help me much.

Instead, I think would be nice to add a flag e.g. --detect-moved-dirs,
which would compare the file listing for each side, and look for whole
directory trees that seem to be moved since last rsync.

It would determine that a directory was moved when it saw that at
least, say, 95% of this files (by name, or by name and size both) that
exist in directory X on the destination side are now in directory Y on
the source side -- and directory X does not exist on the source, and Y
does not exist on the destination.

This would save tremendous amounts of bandwidth, when, for example, I
move a whole bunch of mp3s from one directory to another.  Even if I
move a couple mp3s around within my whole mp3 directory tree, a large
percentage of the files and sizes will probably be in the same place
relative to the root of the moved tree, and have the same name/size as
on the old copy.

Does this make sense?  I hope so.  It's probably not trivial to
implement, but it would be very cool nonetheless.

Thanks for listening,
Moshe

-- 
Moshe Jacobson -- http://runslinux.net -- AIM: Jehsom
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