1 NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (UNRELEASED)
2 Protocol: 29 (unchanged)
7 - The itemized output now uses 'S' for a special file instead of
8 clumping them together with the 'D' for devices. The number of
9 characters is also different (to remove an unused field).
11 - The way rsync escapes unreadable characters has changed. First, rsync
12 now has support for recognizing valid multibyte character sequences in
13 your current locale, allowing it to escape fewer characters than before
14 for a locale such as UTF-8. Second, it now uses an escape idiom of
15 "\#123", which is the literal string "\#" followed by exactly 3 octal
16 digits. Rsync no longer doubles a backslash character in a filename
17 (e.g. it used to output "foo\\bar" when copying "foo\bar") -- now it only
18 escapes a backslash that is followed by a hash-sign and 3 digits (0-9)
19 (e.g. it will output "foo\#134#789" when copying "foo\#789"). See also
20 the --8-bit (-8) option, mentioned below.
22 Script writers: the local rsync is the one that outputs escaped names,
23 so if you need to support unescaping of filenames for older rsyncs, I'd
24 suggest that you parse the output of "rsync --version" and only use the
25 old unescaping rules for 2.6.5 and 2.6.6.
29 - Fixed a really old bug that caused --checksum (-c) to checksum all the
30 files encountered during the delete scan (ouch).
32 - Fixed a potential hang in a remote generator: when the receiver gets a
33 read-error on the socket, it now signals the generator about this so that
34 the generator does not try to send any of the terminating error messages
35 to the client (avoiding a potential hang in some setups).
37 - Made hard-links work with symlinks and devices again.
39 - If the sender gets an early EOF reading a source file, we propagate this
40 error to the receiver so that it can discard the file and try requesting
41 it again (which is the existing behavior for other kinds of read errors).
43 - If a device-file/special-file changes permissions, rsync now updates the
44 permissions without recreating the file.
46 - If the user specifies a remote-host for both the source and destination,
47 we now output a syntax error rather than trying to open the destination
48 hostspec as a filename.
50 - When --inplace creates a new destination file, rsync now creates it with
51 permissions 0600 instead of 0000 -- this makes restarting possible when
52 the transfer gets interrupted in the middle of sending a new file.
54 - Reject the combination of --inplace and --sparse since the sparse-output
55 algorithm doesn't work when overwriting existing data.
57 - Fixed the directory name in the error that is output when pop_dir()
60 - Really fixed the parsing of a "!" entry in .cvsignore files this time.
62 - If the generator gets a stat() error on a file, output it (this used to
63 require at least -vv for the error to be seen).
65 - If waitpid() fails or the child rsync didn't exit cleanly, we now handle
66 the exit status properly and generate a better error.
68 - Fixed some glitches in the double-verbose output when using --copy-dest,
69 --link-dest, or --compare-dest.
71 - Fixed the matching of the dont-compress items (e.g. *.gz) against files
72 that have a path component containing a slash.
74 - If code reading a filter/exclude file an EINTR error, rsync now clears
75 the error flag on the file handle so it can keep on reading.
77 - If --relative is active, the sending side cleans up trailing "/" or "/."
78 suffixes to avoid triggering a bug in older rsync versions. Also, we now
79 reject a ".." dir if it would be sent as a relative dir.
81 - If a non-directory is in the way of a directory and rsync is run with
82 --dry-run and --delete, rsync no longer complains about not being able
83 to opendir() the not-yet present directory.
85 - Got rid of the need for --force to be used in some circumstances with
86 --delete-after (making it consistent with --delete-before/-during).
90 - Added the --specials option to tell rsync to copy special files (and does
91 not require root). The --devices option now affects just character and
92 block devices (which now matches the documentation). The -D option still
93 requests both --devices and --specials, and -a still implies -D.
95 - Added the --append option that makes rsync append data onto files that
96 are longer on the source than the destination (this includes new files).
98 - Added the --min-size=SIZE option to exclude small files from the
101 - Added the --compress-level option to allow you to set how aggressive
102 rsync's compression should be (this option implies --compress).
104 - Enhanced the parsing of the SIZE value for --min-size and --max-size to
105 allow easy entry of multiples of 1000 (instead of just multiples of 1024)
106 and off-by-one values too (e.g. --max-size=8mb-1).
108 - Added the --8-bit (-8) option, which tells rsync to avoid escaping high-
109 bit characters that it thinks are unreadable in the current locale.
111 - The new options --human-readable (-h) and --si change the output of the
112 --stats and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read.
114 - If lutimes() and/or lchmod() are around, use them to allow the
115 preservation of attributes on symlinks.
117 - The --link-dest option now affects symlinks and devices (when possible).
119 - Improved the output of hard-linked and copied files when using
120 --link-dest, --copy-dest, or --compare-dest.
122 - Added two config items to the rsyncd.conf parsing: "pre-xfer exec" and
123 "post-xfer exec". These allow a command to be specified on a per-module
124 basis that will be run before and/or after a daemon-mode transfer. (See
125 the manpage for a list of the environment variables that are set with
126 information about the transfer.)
128 - When using the --relative option, you can now insert a dot dir in
129 the source path to indicate where the replication of the source dirs
130 should start. For example, if you specify a source path of
131 rsync://host/module/foo/bar/./baz/dir with -R, rsync will now only
132 replicate the "baz/dir" part of the source path (note: a trailing
133 dot dir is unaffected unless it also has a trailing slash).
135 - Added some new --no-FOO options that make it easier to override unwanted
136 implied or default options. For example, "-a --no-o" (aka "--archive
137 --no-owner") can be used to turn off the preservation of file ownership
138 that is implied by -a.
140 - Added the --chmod=MODE option that allows the destination permissions to
141 be changed from the source permissions. E.g. --chmod=g+w,o-rwx
143 - Added the "incoming chmod" and "outgoing chmod" daemon options that allow
144 a module to specify what permissions changes should be applied to all
145 files copied to and from the daemon.
147 - Allow the --temp-dir option to be specified when starting a daemon, which
148 sets the default temporary directory for incoming files.
150 - If --delete is combined with --dirs without --recursive, rsync will now
151 delete in any directory whose content is being synchronized.
153 - If --backup is combined with --delete without --backup-dir (and without
154 --delete-excluded), we add a "protect" filter-rule to ensure that files
155 with the backup suffix are not deleted.
157 - The file-count stats that are output by --progress were improved to
158 better indicate what the numbers mean. For instance, the output:
159 "(xfer#5, to-check=8383/9999)" indicates that this was the fifth file
160 to be transferred, and we still need to check 8383 more files out of
163 - The include/exclude code now allows a dir/*** directive (with 3 trailing
164 stars) to match both the dir itself as well as all the content below the
165 dir (dir/** would not match the dir).
167 - Added the --prune-empty-dirs (-m) option that makes the receiving rsync
168 discard empty chains of directories from the file-list. This makes it
169 easier to selectively copy files from a source hierarchy and end up with
170 just the directories needed to hold the resulting files.
172 - If the --itemize-changes (-i) option is repeated, rsync now includes
173 unchanged files in the itemized output (similar to -vv, but without all
174 the other verbose messages that can get in the way). Of course, the
175 client must be version 2.6.7 for this to work, but the remote rsync only
176 needs to be 2.6.7 if you're pushing files.
178 - Added the --super option to make the receiver always attempt super- user
179 activities. This is useful for systems that allow things such as devices
180 to be created or ownership to be set without being UID 0, and is also
181 useful for someone who wants to ensure that errors will be output if the
182 receiving rsync isn't being run as root.
184 - Added the --sockopts option for those few who want to customize the TCP
185 options used to contact a daemon rsync.
187 - Added a way for the --temp-dir option to be combined with a partial-dir
188 setting that lets rsync avoid non-atomic updates (for those times when
189 --temp-dir is not being used because space is tight).
191 - A new support script, files-to-excludes, will transform a list of files
192 into a set of include/exclude directives that will copy those files.
194 - A new option, --executability (-E) can be used to preserve just the
195 execute bit on files, for those times when using the --perms option is
198 - The daemon now logs each module-list request it receives.
200 - New log-format options: %M (modtime), %U (uid), %G (gid), and %B
201 (permission bits, e.g. "rwxr-xrwt").
203 - Some minor documentation improvements.
205 - Updated some diffs in the patches dir.
209 - We now use sigaction() and sigprocmask() if possible, and fall back on
210 signal() if not. Using sigprocmask() ensures that rsync enables all the
211 signals that it needs, just in case it was started in a masked state.
213 - Some buffer sizes were expanded a bit, particularly on systems where
214 MAXPATHLEN is overly small (e.g. cygwin).
216 - If io_printf() tries to format more data than fits in the buffer, exit
217 with an error instead of transmitting a truncated buffer.
219 - If a va_copy macro is defined, lib/snprintf.c will use it when defining
222 - Reduced the amount of stack memory needed for each level of directory
223 recursion by nearly MAXPATHLEN bytes.
225 - The wildmatch function was extended to allow an array of strings to be
226 supplied as the string to match. This allows the exclude code to do less
229 - Got rid of the safe_fname() function (and all the myriad calls) and
230 replaced it with a new function in the log.c code that filters all the
231 output going to the terminal.
233 - Unified the f_name() and the f_name_to() functions.
237 - The diffs in the patches dir now require "patch -p1 <DIFF" instead of
238 the previous -p0. Also, the version included in the release tar now
239 affect generated files (e.g. configure, rsync.1, proto.h, etc.), so
240 it is no longer necessary to run autoconf and/or yodl unless you're
241 applying a patch that was checked out from CVS.
243 - Several diffs in the patches dir now use the proper --enable-FOO
244 configure option instead of --with-FOO to turn on the inclusion of
245 the newly patched feature.
247 - There is a new script, "prepare-source" than can be used to update the
248 various generated files (proto.h, configure, etc.) even before configure
249 has created the Makefile (this is mainly useful when patching the source
250 with a patch that doesn't affect generated files).
252 - The testsuite now sets HOME so that it won't be affected by a file such