does it make sense to run rsync over ftp (curlftpfs)?

[Matt McCutchen]

On Tue, 2009-11-10 at 08:40 +0100, Mac User FR wrote:
> In another hand, if bandwidth is not your problem, with this method  
> rsync should (to be confirmed by an expert, what I am not) still use  
> incremental updates on your files if your ftp volume support append or  
> other file modification function that rsync needs.

With --append, rsync will append to the destination file.  With
--no-whole-file --inplace, it will write only the changed blocks, but it
will read the whole file first, which may defeat the purpose.  Rsync is
at the mercy of curlftpfs as well as the FTP server to perform any
partial updates efficiently; I don't care to research their capabilities
myself.

The main reason to use rsync over an impoverished virtual filesystem
would be to take advantage of rsync's non-performance-related features,
such as filters.

-- 
Matt