Rsync order of maginitude slower with twice as large directory

[Paul Slootman]

On Wed 20 Sep 2006, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> I am in the habit of syncing my /usr/local tree over several computers 
> (all Mac OS X). Recently my /usr/local tree has doubled in size, from 
> 300,000 files to 600,000 files because I have added a large subversion 
> checkout (TeX Live). As a result, rsync has become a time hog. Instead 
> of a minute or two or so to calculate what needs to be sent over, 
> suddenly this process takes 18-20 minutes, 10-20 times as long for 
> twice the tree. If I use --exclude to skip the subversion tree, the 
> process goes back to a minute or so.
> 
> How can I find out what causes this?
> 
> I am using rsync 2.6.0 with Kevin Boyd's HFS+ extensions, because one 
> of the systems runs OS X 10.3.9 and does not have a recent 
> Apple-provided HFS+-aware rsync.

If you can't run a different version of rsync, what does it matter what
causes it... Say it's been fixed in recent versions, would you be happy
knowing that, while you can't actually use the fixed version?


Paul Slootman