Musing on: Detect renamed files and handle by renaming instead ofdelete/re-send

[Andrew Gideon]

Eli wrote:

> Andrew wrote:
>> Is there some philosophical or practical reason why rsync
>> cannot use some persistent external database to map remote
>> inodes to local inodes?
> 
> No idea if this is done or not, but couldn't inodes be recycled if a file
> is
> deleted and the inode marked free?  Then the error of renaming might be
> done
> - unless you mixed it with date/file size info too or something.  

You're right, but that's already done in skip_file().  The lookup table
would "suggest", but the usual checks would still have to be applied to
"confirm".

> Also, do 
> *all* file system types use inodes in the same way?  

I've no idea.  I cherish my UNIX-centric bias <laugh>.

> And what about 
> filesystems remotely mapped in which maybe you don't have access to real
> inode info?

I've no idea.  Perhaps there is no solution for some file systems.  Would
that mean that such a feature could not be included?  Perhaps, like ACL
support, it would be included as an "add on"?

 - Andrew