IMPORTANT ------------------------------------------------------------
-Cross-test versions
-
- Part of the regression suite should be making sure that we don't
- break backwards compatibility: old clients vs new servers and so
- on. Ideally we would test the cross product of versions.
-
- It might be sufficient to test downloads from well-known public
- rsync servers running different versions of rsync. This will give
- some testing and also be the most common case for having different
- versions and not being able to upgrade.
use chroot
for people who want to generate the file list using a find(1)
command or a script.
+File list structure in memory
+
+ Rather than one big array, perhaps have a tree in memory mirroring
+ the directory tree.
+
+ This might make sorting much faster! (I'm not sure it's a big CPU
+ problem, mind you.)
+
+ It might also reduce memory use in storing repeated directory names
+ -- again I'm not sure this is a problem.
+
Performance
Traverse just one directory at a time. Tridge says it's possible.
start, which makes us use a lot of memory and also not pipeline
network access as much as we could.
+
+Handling duplicate names
+
We need to be careful of duplicate names getting into the file list.
- See clean_flist. This could happen if multiple arguments include
- the same file. Bad.
+ See clean_flist(). This could happen if multiple arguments include
+ the same file. Bad.
I think duplicates are only a problem if they're both flowing
through the pipeline at the same time. For example we might have
We could have a hash table.
+ The root of the problem is that we do not want more than one file
+ list entry referring to the same file. At first glance there are
+ several ways this could happen: symlinks, hardlinks, and repeated
+ names on the command line.
+
+ If names are repeated on the command line, they may be present in
+ different forms, perhaps by traversing directory paths in different
+ ways, traversing paths including symlinks. Also we need to allow
+ for expansion of globs by rsync.
+
+ At the moment, clean_flist() requires having the entire file list in
+ memory. Duplicate names are detected just by a string comparison.
+
+ We don't need to worry about hard links causing duplicates because
+ files are never updated in place. Similarly for symlinks.
+
+ I think even if we're using a different symlink mode we don't need
+ to worry.
+
+ Unless we're really clever this will introduce a protocol
+ incompatibility, so we need to be able to accept the old format as
+ well.
+
+
Memory accounting
At exit, show how much memory was used for the file list, etc.
not sure this makes sense with modern mallocs. At any rate it will
make us allocate a huge amount of memory for large file lists.
+
Hard-link handling
At the moment hardlink handling is very expensive, so it's off by
default. It does not need to be so.
+ Since most of the solutions are rather intertwined with the file
+ list it is probably better to fix that first, although fixing
+ hardlinks is possibly simpler.
+
We can rule out hardlinked directories since they will probably
screw us up in all kinds of ways. They simply should not be used.
which should just take a small change to the parser code.
+
Errors
If we hang or get SIGINT, then explain where we were up to. Perhaps
eof" give a message that is more detailed if possible and also more
helpful.
+ If we get an error writing to a socket, then we should perhaps
+ continue trying to read to see if an error message comes across
+ explaining why the socket is closed. I'm not sure if this would
+ work, but it would certainly make our messages more helpful.
+
+ What happens if a directory is missing -x attributes. Do we lose
+ our load? (Debian #28416) Probably fixed now, but a test case
+ would be good.
+
+
File attributes
Device major/minor numbers should be at least 32 bits each. See
can end up with many empty directories. We might avoid this by
lazily creating such directories.
+
zlib
- Perhaps don't use our own zlib. Will we actually be incompatible,
- or just be slightly less efficient?
+ Perhaps don't use our own zlib.
+
+ Advantages:
+
+ - will automatically be up to date with bugfixes in zlib
+
+ - can leave it out for small rsync on e.g. recovery disks
+
+ - can use a shared library
+
+ - avoids people breaking rsync by trying to do this themselves and
+ messing up
+
+ Should we ship zlib for systems that don't have it, or require
+ people to install it separately?
+
+ Apparently this will make us incompatible with versions of rsync
+ that use the patched version of rsync. Probably the simplest way to
+ do this is to just disable gzip (with a warning) when talking to old
+ versions.
+
logging
monitor progress in a log file can do so more easily. See
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=48108
+ At the connections that just get a list of modules are not logged,
+ but they should be.
+
+ If a child of the rsync daemon dies with a signal, we should notice
+ that when we reap it and log a message.
+
+ Keep stderr and stdout properly separated (Debian #23626)
+
+
rsyncd over ssh
There are already some patches to do this.
+proxy authentication
+
+ Allow RSYNC_PROXY to be http://user:pass@proxy.foo:3128/, and do
+ HTTP Basic Proxy-Authentication.
+
+ Multiple schemes are possible, up to and including the insanity that
+ is NTLM, but Basic probably covers most cases.
+
+SOCKS
+
+ Add --with-socks, and then perhaps a command-line option to put them
+ on or off. This might be more reliable than LD_PRELOAD hacks.
+
+Better statistics:
+
+ <Rasmus> mbp: hey, how about an rsync option that just gives you the
+ summary without the list of files? And perhaps gives more
+ information like the number of new files, number of changed,
+ deleted, etc. ?
+ <mbp> Rasmus: nice idea
+ <mbp> there is --stats
+ <mbp> but at the moment it's very tridge-oriented
+ <mbp> rather than user-friendly
+ <mbp> it would be nice to improve it
+ <mbp> that would also work well with --dryrun
+
+TDB:
+
+ Rather than storing the file list in memory, store it in a TDB.
+
+ This *might* make memory usage lower while building the file list.
+
+ Hashtable lookup will mean files are not transmitted in order,
+ though... hm.
+
+ This would neatly eliminate one of the major post-fork shared data
+ structures.
+
+
+chmod:
+
+ On 12 Mar 2002, Dave Dykstra <dwd@bell-labs.com> wrote:
+ > If we would add an option to do that functionality, I would vote for one
+ > that was more general which could mask off any set of permission bits and
+ > possibly add any set of bits. Perhaps a chmod-like syntax if it could be
+ > implemented simply.
+
+ I think that would be good too. For example, people uploading files
+ to a web server might like to say
+
+ rsync -avzP --chmod a+rX ./ sourcefrog.net:/home/www/sourcefrog/
+
+ Ideally the patch would implement as many of the gnu chmod semantics
+ as possible. I think the mode parser should be a separate function
+ that passes back something like (mask,set) description to the rest of
+ the program. For bonus points there would be a test case for the
+ parser.
+
+ (Debian #23628)
+
+
+--diff
+
+ Allow people to specify the diff command. (Might want to use wdiff,
+ gnudiff, etc.)
+
+ Just diff the temporary file with the destination file, and delete
+ the tmp file rather than moving it into place.
+
+ Interaction with --partial.
+
+ Security interactions with daemon mode?
+
+ (Suggestion from david.e.sewell)
+
+
+Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295)
+
+ A bit hard to believe, but apparently it happens.
+
+
+Check "refuse options works"
+
+ We need a test case for this...
+
+ Was this broken when we changed to popt?
+
+
+
PLATFORMS ------------------------------------------------------------
Win32
we are correct to call close(), because shutdown() discards
untransmitted data.
+DEVELOPMENT ----------------------------------------------------------
+
+Splint
+
+ Build rsync with SPLINT to try to find security holes. Add
+ annotations as necessary. Keep track of the number of warnings
+ found initially, and see how many of them are real bugs, or real
+ security bugs. Knowing the percentage of likely hits would be
+ really interesting for other projects.
+
+Torture test
+
+ Something that just keeps running rsync continuously over a data set
+ likely to generate problems.
+
+Cross-testing
+
+ Run current rsync versions against significant past releases.
+
+Memory debugger
+
+ jra recommends Valgrind:
+
+ http://devel-home.kde.org/~sewardj/
+
+TESTING --------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Cross-test versions
+
+ Part of the regression suite should be making sure that we don't
+ break backwards compatibility: old clients vs new servers and so
+ on. Ideally we would test the cross product of versions.
+
+ It might be sufficient to test downloads from well-known public
+ rsync servers running different versions of rsync. This will give
+ some testing and also be the most common case for having different
+ versions and not being able to upgrade.
+
+Test large files
+
+ Sparse and non-sparse
+
+Mutator program
+
+ Insert bytes, delete bytes, swap blocks, ...
+
+configure option to enable dangerous tests
+
+If tests are skipped, say why.
+
+Test daemon feature to disallow particular options.
+
+Pipe program that makes slow/jerky connections.
+
+Versions of read() and write() that corrupt the stream, or abruptly fail
+
+
DOCUMENTATION --------------------------------------------------------
Update README
+Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site
+
+Update web site from CVS
+
BUILD FARM -----------------------------------------------------------
Add machines
NICE -----------------------------------------------------------------
-SIGHUP
-
- Re-read config file (just exec() ourselves) rather than exiting.
-
--no-detach and --no-fork options
Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a
Indicate whether files are new, updated, or deleted
+ At end of transfer, show how many files were or were not transferred
+ correctly.
+
internationalization
Change to using gettext(). Probably need to ship this for platforms
fairly directly into rsync commands: it just needs to remember the
current host, directory and so on. We can probably even do
completion of remote filenames.
-
-%K%