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.
+
+ I think duplicates are only a problem if they're both flowing
+ through the pipeline at the same time. For example we might have
+ updated the first occurrence after reading the checksums for the
+ second. So possibly we just need to make sure that we don't have
+ both in the pipeline at the same time.
+
+ Possibly if we did one directory at a time that would be sufficient.
+
+ Alternatively we could pre-process the arguments to make sure no
+ duplicates will ever be inserted. There could be some bad cases
+ when we're collapsing symlinks.
+
+ 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.
+ Also we do a wierd exponential-growth allocation in flist.c. I'm
+ 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)
+
+
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.
+
+
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
hang/timeout friendliness
- On
-
verbose output
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.
-