Using --files-from with a pipe

[Martin Schwenke]

I'd like to use the --files-from option with a pipe - either a named
pipe or in a pipeline where rsync reads from stdin.

The problem is that --files-from seems to tell rsync to read until
EOF, construct the file list, transfer files and then terminate.  The
fact that there's only 1 rsync process on the source end seems to
confirm this.

--files-from probably pre-dates the fairly recent incremental
file-list transmission feature by a couple of years, so reading
incrementally from a pipe probably wasn't considered when --files-from
was implemented... because it wouldn't have been possible.

So, can someone who knows the code please guestimate whether it would
be easy to "fix" rsync so that --files-from can read from a pipe and
use the incremental file-list stuff to transfer whatever files who's
names it can read between each time reading from the pipe blocks?  I
guess this would mean that it would have to read one filename at a
time and process it.  So, would that be easy?

If the answer is "easy" then I'll have a go at implementing it...  :-)

peace & happiness,
martin