Document the new --specials option and how -D and --devices now work.

[rsync/rsync.git] / NEWS

NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (UNRELEASED)
Protocol: 29 (unchanged)
Changes since 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).

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

    - 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.

    - 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.

  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).

    - The options --human-readable (-h) and --si change the output of the
      --stats and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read.

    - 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).

    - Improved the output of hard-linked and copied files when using
      --link-dest, --copy-dest, or --compare-dest.

    - 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 manpage 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

    - 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).

    - 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.

    - Some minor documentation improvements.

    - Updated some diffs in the patches dir.

  INTERNAL:

    - 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.

  DEVELOPER RELATED:

    - 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.