I would like to add features to rsync: tags and saving local modifications

ray vantassle rayvantassle at gmail.com
Sat Aug 22 14:56:41 UTC 2015


" Feature 1: tags"

Sounds like this would be no less work for the user than just having
include/exclude filter list(s).
But right now rsync works poorly with large filter lists.  That's something
I have fixed, but just haven't submitted the patches yet.

Also: is xattr supported on all OS's and filesystems?  If not, is it worth
the effort to make a (possibly large) effort to rsync?

"Feature 2: saving local modifications
Our users frequently do some local modifications. They always get lost when
they rsync with newer version."

The purpose of rsync is to make exact file copies from one machine to
another.    What you are asking for is for the recipient system to
sometimes refuse to accept an updated copy.
There is already a mechanism to do this -- dir-merge.
In your proposal, you would have to do some sort of extra work --
presumably a script or whatever -- to detect these modified files and
fiddle with xattr or whatever for this rsync feature to know how to handle
them.

Since you are already going to have to run a special-purpose script
before/after the rsync, why not just have it create a dir-merge file?  That
sounds less complex than having a bunch of special xattr attributes and a
set of special handling based on those xattrs.
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