NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (UNRELEASED)

Protocol: 29 (unchanged)

Changes since 2.6.6:

OUTPUT CHANGES:

- The letter 'D' in the itemized output was being used for both devices

(character or block) as well as other special files (such as fifos and

named sockets). This has changed to separate non-device special files

under the 'S' designation (e.g. "cS+++++++ path/fifo"). See also the

"--specials" option, below.

- The way rsync escapes unreadable characters has changed. First, rsync

now has support for recognizing valid multibyte character sequences in

your current locale, allowing it to escape fewer characters than before

for a locale such as UTF-8. Second, it now uses an escape idiom of

"\#123", which is the literal string "\#" followed by exactly 3 octal

digits. Rsync no longer doubles a backslash character in a filename

(e.g. it used to output "foo\\bar" when copying "foo\bar") -- now it only

escapes a backslash that is followed by a hash-sign and 3 digits (0-9)

(e.g. it will output "foo\#134#789" when copying "foo\#789"). See also

the --8-bit-output (-8) option, mentioned below.

Script writers: the local rsync is the one that outputs escaped names,

so if you need to support unescaping of filenames for older rsyncs, I'd

suggest that you parse the output of "rsync --version" and only use the

old unescaping rules for 2.6.5 and 2.6.6.

BUG FIXES:

- Fixed a really old bug that caused --checksum (-c) to checksum all the

files encountered during the delete scan (ouch).

- Fixed a potential hang in a remote generator: when the receiver gets a

read-error on the socket, it now signals the generator about this so that

the generator does not try to send any of the terminating error messages

to the client (avoiding a potential hang in some setups).

- Made hard-links work with symlinks and devices again.

- If the sender gets an early EOF reading a source file, we propagate this

error to the receiver so that it can discard the file and try requesting

it again (which is the existing behavior for other kinds of read errors).

- If a device-file/special-file changes permissions, rsync now updates the

permissions without recreating the file.

- If the user specifies a remote-host for both the source and destination,

we now output a syntax error rather than trying to open the destination

hostspec as a filename.

- When --inplace creates a new destination file, rsync now creates it with

permissions 0600 instead of 0000 -- this makes restarting possible when

the transfer gets interrupted in the middle of sending a new file.

- Reject the combination of --inplace and --sparse since the sparse-output

algorithm doesn't work when overwriting existing data.

- Fixed the directory name in the error that is output when pop_dir()

fails.

- Really fixed the parsing of a "!" entry in .cvsignore files this time.

- If the generator gets a stat() error on a file, output it (this used to

require at least -vv for the error to be seen).

- If waitpid() fails or the child rsync didn't exit cleanly, we now handle

the exit status properly and generate a better error.

- Fixed some glitches in the double-verbose output when using --copy-dest,

--link-dest, or --compare-dest. Also improved how the verbose output

handles hard-links (within the transfer) that had an up-to-date alternate

"dest" file, and copied files (via --copy-dest).

- Fixed the matching of the dont-compress items (e.g. *.gz) against files

that have a path component containing a slash.

- If code reading a filter/exclude file an EINTR error, rsync now clears

the error flag on the file handle so it can keep on reading.

- If --relative is active, the sending side cleans up trailing "/" or "/."

suffixes to avoid triggering a bug in older rsync versions. Also, we now

reject a ".." dir if it would be sent as a relative dir.

- If a non-directory is in the way of a directory and rsync is run with

--dry-run and --delete, rsync no longer complains about not being able

to opendir() the not-yet present directory.

- When --list-only is used and a non-existent local destination dir was

also specified as a destination, rsync no longer generates a warning

about being unable to create the missing directory.

- Fixed some problems with --relative --no-implied-dirs when the

destination directory did not yet exist: we can now create a symlink or

device when it is the first thing in the missing dir, and --fuzzy no

longer complains about being unable to open the missing dir.

- Fixed a bug where the --copy-links option would not affect implied

directories (see --relative) without --copy-unsafe-links.

- Got rid of the need for --force to be used in some circumstances with

--delete-after (making it consistent with --delete-before/-during).

- Rsync now ignores the SIGXFSZ signal, just in case your OS sends this

when a file is too large (rsync handles the write error).

ENHANCEMENTS:

- Added the --append option that makes rsync append data onto files that

are longer on the source than the destination (this includes new files).

- Added the --min-size=SIZE option to exclude small files from the

transfer.

- Added the --compress-level option to allow you to set how aggressive

rsync's compression should be (this option implies --compress).

- Enhanced the parsing of the SIZE value for --min-size and --max-size to

allow easy entry of multiples of 1000 (instead of just multiples of 1024)

and off-by-one values too (e.g. --max-size=8mb-1).

- Added the --8-bit-output (-8) option, which tells rsync to avoid escaping

high-bit characters that it thinks are unreadable in the current locale.

- The new option --human-readable (-h) changes the output of --progress,

--stats, and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read. If repeated,

the units become powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000. (The old

meaning of -h, as a shorthand for --help, still works as long as you

just use it on its own, as in "rsync -h".)

- If lutimes() and/or lchmod() are around, use them to allow the

preservation of attributes on symlinks.

- The --link-dest option now affects symlinks and devices (when possible).

- Added two config items to the rsyncd.conf parsing: "pre-xfer exec" and

"post-xfer exec". These allow a command to be specified on a per-module

basis that will be run before and/or after a daemon-mode transfer. (See

the man page for a list of the environment variables that are set with

information about the transfer.)

- When using the --relative option, you can now insert a dot dir in

the source path to indicate where the replication of the source dirs

should start. For example, if you specify a source path of

rsync://host/module/foo/bar/./baz/dir with -R, rsync will now only

replicate the "baz/dir" part of the source path (note: a trailing

dot dir is unaffected unless it also has a trailing slash).

- Added some new --no-FOO options that make it easier to override unwanted

implied or default options. For example, "-a --no-o" (aka "--archive

--no-owner") can be used to turn off the preservation of file ownership

that is implied by -a.

- Added the --chmod=MODE option that allows the destination permissions to

be changed from the source permissions. E.g. --chmod=g+w,o-rwx

- Added the "incoming chmod" and "outgoing chmod" daemon options that allow

a module to specify what permissions changes should be applied to all

files copied to and from the daemon.

- Allow the --temp-dir option to be specified when starting a daemon, which

sets the default temporary directory for incoming files.

- If --delete is combined with --dirs without --recursive, rsync will now

delete in any directory whose content is being synchronized.

- If --backup is combined with --delete without --backup-dir (and without

--delete-excluded), we add a "protect" filter-rule to ensure that files

with the backup suffix are not deleted.

- The file-count stats that are output by --progress were improved to

better indicate what the numbers mean. For instance, the output:

"(xfer#5, to-check=8383/9999)" indicates that this was the fifth file

to be transferred, and we still need to check 8383 more files out of

a total of 9999.

- The include/exclude code now allows a dir/*** directive (with 3 trailing

stars) to match both the dir itself as well as all the content below the

dir (dir/** would not match the dir).

- Added the --prune-empty-dirs (-m) option that makes the receiving rsync

discard empty chains of directories from the file-list. This makes it

easier to selectively copy files from a source hierarchy and end up with

just the directories needed to hold the resulting files.

- If the --itemize-changes (-i) option is repeated, rsync now includes

unchanged files in the itemized output (similar to -vv, but without all

the other verbose messages that can get in the way). Of course, the

client must be version 2.6.7 for this to work, but the remote rsync only

needs to be 2.6.7 if you're pushing files.

- Added the --specials option to tell rsync to copy non-device special

files (which rsync now attempts even as a normal user). The --devices

option now requests the copying of just devices (character and block).

The -D option still requests both (e.g. --devices and --specials), -a

still implies -D, and non-root users still get a silent downgrade that

omits device copying.

- Added the --super option to make the receiver always attempt super-user

activities. This is useful for systems that allow things such as devices

to be created or ownership to be set without being UID 0, and is also

useful for someone who wants to ensure that errors will be output if the

receiving rsync isn't being run as root.

- Added the --sockopts option for those few who want to customize the TCP

options used to contact a daemon rsync.

- Added a way for the --temp-dir option to be combined with a partial-dir

setting that lets rsync avoid non-atomic updates (for those times when

--temp-dir is not being used because space is tight).

- A new support script, files-to-excludes, will transform a list of files

into a set of include/exclude directives that will copy those files.

- A new option, --executability (-E) can be used to preserve just the

execute bit on files, for those times when using the --perms option is

not desired.

- The daemon now logs each connection and also each module-list request

that it receives.

- New log-format options: %M (modtime), %U (uid), %G (gid), and %B

(permission bits, e.g. "rwxr-xrwt").

- The --dry-run option no longer forces the enabling of --verbose.

- The --remove-sent-files option now does a better job of incrementally

removing the sent files on the sending side (older versions tended to

clump up all the removals at the end).

- A daemon now supersedes its minimal SIGCHLD handler with the standard

PID-remembering version after forking to handle the request. This

ensures that the generator can get the child-exit status from the

receiver.

- Use of the --bwlimit option no longer interferes with the remote rsync

sending error messages about invalid/refused options.

- Rsync no longer returns a usage error when used with one local source arg

and no destination: this now implies the --list-only option, just like

the comparable situation with a remote source arg.

- Added the --copy-dirlinks option, a more limited version of --copy-links.

- Various documentation improvements, including: a better synopsis, some

improved examples, a better discussion of the presence and absence of

--perms (including how it interacts with the new --executability and

--chmod options), an extended discussion of --temp-dir, an improved

discussion of --partial-dir, a better description of rsync's pattern

matching characters, an improved --no-implied-dirs section, and the

documenting of what the --stats option outputs.

- Various new and updated diffs in the patches dir, including: acls.diff,

xattrs.diff, atimes.diff, detect-renamed.diff, and slp.diff.

INTERNAL:

- We now use sigaction() and sigprocmask() if possible, and fall back on

signal() if not. Using sigprocmask() ensures that rsync enables all the

signals that it needs, just in case it was started in a masked state.

- Some buffer sizes were expanded a bit, particularly on systems where

MAXPATHLEN is overly small (e.g. cygwin).

- If io_printf() tries to format more data than fits in the buffer, exit

with an error instead of transmitting a truncated buffer.

- If a va_copy macro is defined, lib/snprintf.c will use it when defining

the VA_COPY macro.

- Reduced the amount of stack memory needed for each level of directory

recursion by nearly MAXPATHLEN bytes.

- The wildmatch function was extended to allow an array of strings to be

supplied as the string to match. This allows the exclude code to do less

string copying.

- Got rid of the safe_fname() function (and all the myriad calls) and

replaced it with a new function in the log.c code that filters all the

output going to the terminal.

- Unified the f_name() and the f_name_to() functions.

- Improved the hash-table code the sender uses to handle checksums to make

it use slightly less memory and run just a little faster.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

- The diffs in the patches dir now require "patch -p1 <DIFF" instead of

the previous -p0. Also, the version included in the release tar now

affect generated files (e.g. configure, rsync.1, proto.h, etc.), so

it is no longer necessary to run autoconf and/or yodl unless you're

applying a patch that was checked out from CVS.

- Several diffs in the patches dir now use the proper --enable-FOO

configure option instead of --with-FOO to turn on the inclusion of

the newly patched feature.

- There is a new script, "prepare-source" than can be used to update the

various generated files (proto.h, configure, etc.) even before configure

has created the Makefile (this is mainly useful when patching the source

with a patch that doesn't affect generated files).

- The testsuite now sets HOME so that it won't be affected by a file such

as ~/.popt.