Mention the --list-arg change.
[rsync/rsync.git] / NEWS
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1NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (UNRELEASED)
2Protocol: 29 (unchanged)
3Changes since 2.6.6:
4
5 OUTPUT CHANGES:
6
7 - The letter 'D' in the itemized output was being used for both devices
8 (character or block) as well as other special files (such as fifos and
9 named sockets). This has changed to separate non-device special files
10 under the 'S' designation (e.g. "cS+++++++ path/fifo"). See also the
11 "--specials" option, below.
12
13 - The way rsync escapes unreadable characters has changed. First, rsync
14 now has support for recognizing valid multibyte character sequences in
15 your current locale, allowing it to escape fewer characters than before
16 for a locale such as UTF-8. Second, it now uses an escape idiom of
17 "\#123", which is the literal string "\#" followed by exactly 3 octal
18 digits. Rsync no longer doubles a backslash character in a filename
19 (e.g. it used to output "foo\\bar" when copying "foo\bar") -- now it only
20 escapes a backslash that is followed by a hash-sign and 3 digits (0-9)
21 (e.g. it will output "foo\#134#789" when copying "foo\#789"). See also
22 the --8-bit-output (-8) option, mentioned below.
23
24 Script writers: the local rsync is the one that outputs escaped names,
25 so if you need to support unescaping of filenames for older rsyncs, I'd
26 suggest that you parse the output of "rsync --version" and only use the
27 old unescaping rules for 2.6.5 and 2.6.6.
28
29 BUG FIXES:
30
31 - Fixed a really old bug that caused --checksum (-c) to checksum all the
32 files encountered during the delete scan (ouch).
33
34 - Fixed a potential hang in a remote generator: when the receiver gets a
35 read-error on the socket, it now signals the generator about this so that
36 the generator does not try to send any of the terminating error messages
37 to the client (avoiding a potential hang in some setups).
38
39 - Made hard-links work with symlinks and devices again.
40
41 - If the sender gets an early EOF reading a source file, we propagate this
42 error to the receiver so that it can discard the file and try requesting
43 it again (which is the existing behavior for other kinds of read errors).
44
45 - If a device-file/special-file changes permissions, rsync now updates the
46 permissions without recreating the file.
47
48 - If the user specifies a remote-host for both the source and destination,
49 we now output a syntax error rather than trying to open the destination
50 hostspec as a filename.
51
52 - When --inplace creates a new destination file, rsync now creates it with
53 permissions 0600 instead of 0000 -- this makes restarting possible when
54 the transfer gets interrupted in the middle of sending a new file.
55
56 - Reject the combination of --inplace and --sparse since the sparse-output
57 algorithm doesn't work when overwriting existing data.
58
59 - Fixed the directory name in the error that is output when pop_dir()
60 fails.
61
62 - Really fixed the parsing of a "!" entry in .cvsignore files this time.
63
64 - If the generator gets a stat() error on a file, output it (this used to
65 require at least -vv for the error to be seen).
66
67 - If waitpid() fails or the child rsync didn't exit cleanly, we now handle
68 the exit status properly and generate a better error.
69
70 - Fixed some glitches in the double-verbose output when using --copy-dest,
71 --link-dest, or --compare-dest. Also improved how the verbose output
72 handles hard-links (within the transfer) that had an up-to-date alternate
73 "dest" file, and copied files (via --copy-dest).
74
75 - Fixed the matching of the dont-compress items (e.g. *.gz) against files
76 that have a path component containing a slash.
77
78 - If code reading a filter/exclude file an EINTR error, rsync now clears
79 the error flag on the file handle so it can keep on reading.
80
81 - If --relative is active, the sending side cleans up trailing "/" or "/."
82 suffixes to avoid triggering a bug in older rsync versions. Also, we now
83 reject a ".." dir if it would be sent as a relative dir.
84
85 - If a non-directory is in the way of a directory and rsync is run with
86 --dry-run and --delete, rsync no longer complains about not being able
87 to opendir() the not-yet present directory.
88
89 - When --list-only is used and a non-existent local destination dir was
90 also specified as a destination, rsync no longer generates a warning
91 about being unable to create the missing directory.
92
93 - Got rid of the need for --force to be used in some circumstances with
94 --delete-after (making it consistent with --delete-before/-during).
95
96 - Rsync now ignores the SIGXFSZ signal, just in case your OS sends this
97 when a file is too large (rsync handles the write error).
98
99 ENHANCEMENTS:
100
101 - Added the --append option that makes rsync append data onto files that
102 are longer on the source than the destination (this includes new files).
103
104 - Added the --min-size=SIZE option to exclude small files from the
105 transfer.
106
107 - Added the --compress-level option to allow you to set how aggressive
108 rsync's compression should be (this option implies --compress).
109
110 - Enhanced the parsing of the SIZE value for --min-size and --max-size to
111 allow easy entry of multiples of 1000 (instead of just multiples of 1024)
112 and off-by-one values too (e.g. --max-size=8mb-1).
113
114 - Added the --8-bit-output (-8) option, which tells rsync to avoid escaping
115 high-bit characters that it thinks are unreadable in the current locale.
116
117 - The new option --human-readable (-h) changes the output of --progress,
118 --stats, and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read. If repeated,
119 the units become powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000. (The old
120 meaning of -h, as a shorthand for --help, still works as long as you
121 just use it on its own, as in "rsync -h".)
122
123 - If lutimes() and/or lchmod() are around, use them to allow the
124 preservation of attributes on symlinks.
125
126 - The --link-dest option now affects symlinks and devices (when possible).
127
128 - Added two config items to the rsyncd.conf parsing: "pre-xfer exec" and
129 "post-xfer exec". These allow a command to be specified on a per-module
130 basis that will be run before and/or after a daemon-mode transfer. (See
131 the man page for a list of the environment variables that are set with
132 information about the transfer.)
133
134 - When using the --relative option, you can now insert a dot dir in
135 the source path to indicate where the replication of the source dirs
136 should start. For example, if you specify a source path of
137 rsync://host/module/foo/bar/./baz/dir with -R, rsync will now only
138 replicate the "baz/dir" part of the source path (note: a trailing
139 dot dir is unaffected unless it also has a trailing slash).
140
141 - Added some new --no-FOO options that make it easier to override unwanted
142 implied or default options. For example, "-a --no-o" (aka "--archive
143 --no-owner") can be used to turn off the preservation of file ownership
144 that is implied by -a.
145
146 - Added the --chmod=MODE option that allows the destination permissions to
147 be changed from the source permissions. E.g. --chmod=g+w,o-rwx
148
149 - Added the "incoming chmod" and "outgoing chmod" daemon options that allow
150 a module to specify what permissions changes should be applied to all
151 files copied to and from the daemon.
152
153 - Allow the --temp-dir option to be specified when starting a daemon, which
154 sets the default temporary directory for incoming files.
155
156 - If --delete is combined with --dirs without --recursive, rsync will now
157 delete in any directory whose content is being synchronized.
158
159 - If --backup is combined with --delete without --backup-dir (and without
160 --delete-excluded), we add a "protect" filter-rule to ensure that files
161 with the backup suffix are not deleted.
162
163 - The file-count stats that are output by --progress were improved to
164 better indicate what the numbers mean. For instance, the output:
165 "(xfer#5, to-check=8383/9999)" indicates that this was the fifth file
166 to be transferred, and we still need to check 8383 more files out of
167 a total of 9999.
168
169 - The include/exclude code now allows a dir/*** directive (with 3 trailing
170 stars) to match both the dir itself as well as all the content below the
171 dir (dir/** would not match the dir).
172
173 - Added the --prune-empty-dirs (-m) option that makes the receiving rsync
174 discard empty chains of directories from the file-list. This makes it
175 easier to selectively copy files from a source hierarchy and end up with
176 just the directories needed to hold the resulting files.
177
178 - If the --itemize-changes (-i) option is repeated, rsync now includes
179 unchanged files in the itemized output (similar to -vv, but without all
180 the other verbose messages that can get in the way). Of course, the
181 client must be version 2.6.7 for this to work, but the remote rsync only
182 needs to be 2.6.7 if you're pushing files.
183
184 - Added the --specials option to tell rsync to copy non-device special
185 files (which rsync now attempts even as a normal user). The --devices
186 option now requests the copying of just devices (character and block).
187 The -D option still requests both (e.g. --devices and --specials), -a
188 still implies -D, and non-root users still get a silent downgrade that
189 omits device copying.
190
191 - Added the --super option to make the receiver always attempt super-user
192 activities. This is useful for systems that allow things such as devices
193 to be created or ownership to be set without being UID 0, and is also
194 useful for someone who wants to ensure that errors will be output if the
195 receiving rsync isn't being run as root.
196
197 - Added the --sockopts option for those few who want to customize the TCP
198 options used to contact a daemon rsync.
199
200 - Added a way for the --temp-dir option to be combined with a partial-dir
201 setting that lets rsync avoid non-atomic updates (for those times when
202 --temp-dir is not being used because space is tight).
203
204 - A new support script, files-to-excludes, will transform a list of files
205 into a set of include/exclude directives that will copy those files.
206
207 - A new option, --executability (-E) can be used to preserve just the
208 execute bit on files, for those times when using the --perms option is
209 not desired.
210
211 - The daemon now logs each connection and also each module-list request
212 that it receives.
213
214 - New log-format options: %M (modtime), %U (uid), %G (gid), and %B
215 (permission bits, e.g. "rwxr-xrwt").
216
217 - The --dry-run option no longer forces the enabling of --verbose.
218
219 - The --remove-sent-files option now does a better job of incrementally
220 removing the sent files on the sending side (older versions tended to
221 clump up all the removals at the end).
222
223 - A daemon now supersedes its minimal SIGCHLD handler with the standard
224 PID-remembering version after forking to handle the request. This
225 ensures that the generator can get the child-exit status from the
226 receiver.
227
228 - Use of the --bwlimit option no longer interferes with the remote rsync
229 sending error messages about invalid/refused options.
230
231 - Rsync no longer returns a usage error when used with one local source arg
232 and no destination: this now implies the --list-only option, just like
233 the comparable situation with a remote source arg.
234
235 - Various documentation improvements, including: a better synopsis, some
236 improved examples, a better discussion of the presence and absence of
237 --perms (including how it interacts with the new --executability and
238 --chmod options), an extended discussion of --temp-dir, an improved
239 discussion of --partial-dir, a better description of rsync's pattern
240 matching characters, and the documenting of what the various items in
241 the --stats output mean.
242
243 - Various new and updated diffs in the patches dir, including: acls.diff,
244 xattrs.diff, atimes.diff, detect-renamed.diff, and slp.diff.
245
246 INTERNAL:
247
248 - We now use sigaction() and sigprocmask() if possible, and fall back on
249 signal() if not. Using sigprocmask() ensures that rsync enables all the
250 signals that it needs, just in case it was started in a masked state.
251
252 - Some buffer sizes were expanded a bit, particularly on systems where
253 MAXPATHLEN is overly small (e.g. cygwin).
254
255 - If io_printf() tries to format more data than fits in the buffer, exit
256 with an error instead of transmitting a truncated buffer.
257
258 - If a va_copy macro is defined, lib/snprintf.c will use it when defining
259 the VA_COPY macro.
260
261 - Reduced the amount of stack memory needed for each level of directory
262 recursion by nearly MAXPATHLEN bytes.
263
264 - The wildmatch function was extended to allow an array of strings to be
265 supplied as the string to match. This allows the exclude code to do less
266 string copying.
267
268 - Got rid of the safe_fname() function (and all the myriad calls) and
269 replaced it with a new function in the log.c code that filters all the
270 output going to the terminal.
271
272 - Unified the f_name() and the f_name_to() functions.
273
274 DEVELOPER RELATED:
275
276 - The diffs in the patches dir now require "patch -p1 <DIFF" instead of
277 the previous -p0. Also, the version included in the release tar now
278 affect generated files (e.g. configure, rsync.1, proto.h, etc.), so
279 it is no longer necessary to run autoconf and/or yodl unless you're
280 applying a patch that was checked out from CVS.
281
282 - Several diffs in the patches dir now use the proper --enable-FOO
283 configure option instead of --with-FOO to turn on the inclusion of
284 the newly patched feature.
285
286 - There is a new script, "prepare-source" than can be used to update the
287 various generated files (proto.h, configure, etc.) even before configure
288 has created the Makefile (this is mainly useful when patching the source
289 with a patch that doesn't affect generated files).
290
291 - The testsuite now sets HOME so that it won't be affected by a file such
292 as ~/.popt.