-*- indented-text -*-
BUGS ---------------------------------------------------------------
+Fix hardlink reporting 2002/03/25
+Fix progress indicator to not corrupt log
+lchmod question
+Do not rely on having a group called "nobody"
+Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295)
+Win32
+
+FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------
+server-imposed bandwidth limits
+rsyncd over ssh
+Use chroot only if supported
+Allow supplementary groups in rsyncd.conf 2002/04/09
+Handling IPv6 on old machines
+Other IPv6 stuff:
+Add ACL support 2001/12/02
+Lazy directory creation
+Conditional -z for old protocols
+proxy authentication 2002/01/23
+SOCKS 2002/01/23
+FAT support
+Allow forcing arbitrary permissions 2002/03/12
+--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15
+Add daemon --no-detach and --no-fork options
+
+DOCUMENTATION --------------------------------------------------------
+Update README
+Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site
+Update web site from CVS
+Perhaps redo manual as SGML
+
+LOGGING --------------------------------------------------------------
+Make dry run list all updates 2002/04/03
+Memory accounting
+Improve error messages
+Better statistics: Rasmus 2002/03/08
+Perhaps flush stdout like syslog
+Log deamon sessions that just list modules
+Log child death on signal
+Keep stderr and stdout properly separated (Debian #23626)
+Log errors with function that reports process of origin
+verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20
+Add reason for transfer to file logging
+debugging of daemon 2002/04/08
+internationalization
+
+DEVELOPMENT --------------------------------------------------------
+Handling duplicate names
+Use generic zlib 2002/02/25
+TDB: 2002/03/12
+Splint 2002/03/12
+Memory debugger
+Create release script
+Add machines to build farm
+
+PERFORMANCE ----------------------------------------------------------
+File list structure in memory
+Traverse just one directory at a time
+Hard-link handling
+Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08
+Accelerate MD4
+String area code
+
+TESTING --------------------------------------------------------------
+Torture test
+Cross-test versions 2001/08/22
+Test on kernel source
+Test large files
+Create mutator program for testing
+Create configure option to enable dangerous tests
+If tests are skipped, say why.
+Test daemon feature to disallow particular options.
+Create pipe program for testing
+Create test makefile target for some tests
+Test "refuse options" works
+
+RELATED PROJECTS -----------------------------------------------------
+rsyncsh
+http://rsync.samba.org/rsync-and-debian/
+rsyncable gzip patch
+rsyncsplit as alternative to real integration with gzip?
+reverse rsync over HTTP Range
+
-There seems to be a bug with hardlinks
+
+BUGS ---------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Fix hardlink reporting 2002/03/25
+ (was: There seems to be a bug with hardlinks)
mbp/2 build$ ls -l /tmp/a /tmp/b -i
/tmp/a:
-rw-rw-r-- 5 mbp mbp 29 Mar 25 17:30 b2
-rw-rw-r-- 5 mbp mbp 29 Mar 25 17:30 b3
+ -- --
+
-Progress indicator can produce corrupt output when transferring directories:
+Fix progress indicator to not corrupt log
+
+ Progress indicator can produce corrupt output when transferring directories:
main/binary-arm/
main/binary-arm/admin/
main/binary-arm/math/
main/binary-arm/misc/
+ -- --
+
+
+lchmod question
-lchmod
I don't think we handle this properly on systems that don't have the
call. Are there any such?
+ -- --
-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.
Do not rely on having a group called "nobody"
On Debian it's "nogroup"
-DAEMON --------------------------------------------------------------
-
-server-imposed bandwidth limits
-
-rsyncd over ssh
-
- There are already some patches to do this.
-
- BitKeeper uses a server whose login shell is set to bkd. That's
- probably a reasonable approach.
-
-
-FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
---dry-run is too dry
-
- Mark Santcroos points out that -n fails to list files which have
- only metadata changes, though it probably should.
-
- There may be a Debian bug about this as well.
-
-
-use chroot
-
- If the platform doesn't support it, then don't even try.
-
- If running as non-root, then don't fail, just give a warning.
- (There was a thread about this a while ago?)
-
- http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-August/thread.html
- http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-September/thread.html
-
-
-supplementary groups
-
- Perhaps allow supplementary groups to be specified in rsyncd.conf;
- then make the first one the primary gid and all the rest be
- supplementary gids.
-
-
-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.
-
- At the moment rsync reads the whole file list into memory at the
- 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.
+Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295)
- At the moment, clean_flist() requires having the entire file list in
- memory. Duplicate names are detected just by a string comparison.
+ A bit hard to believe, but apparently it happens.
- 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.
+Win32
+ Don't detach, because this messes up --srvany.
-Memory accounting
+ http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00234.html
- 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
+FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------
- At the moment hardlink handling is very expensive, so it's off by
- default. It does not need to be so.
+server-imposed bandwidth limits
- 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.
- At the moment rsync only cares about hardlinks to regular files. I
- guess you could also use them for sockets, devices and other beasts,
- but I have not seen them.
+rsyncd over ssh
- When trying to reproduce hard links, we only need to worry about
- files that have more than one name (nlinks>1 && !S_ISDIR).
+ There are already some patches to do this.
- The basic point of this is to discover alternate names that refer to
- the same file. All operations, including creating the file and
- writing modifications to it need only to be done for the first name.
- For all later names, we just create the link and then leave it
- alone.
+ BitKeeper uses a server whose login shell is set to bkd. That's
+ probably a reasonable approach.
- If hard links are to be preserved:
+ -- --
- Before the generator/receiver fork, the list of files is received
- from the sender (recv_file_list), and a table for detecting hard
- links is built.
- The generator looks for hard links within the file list and does
- not send checksums for them, though it does send other metadata.
+Use chroot only if supported
- The sender sends the device number and inode with file entries, so
- that files are uniquely identified.
+ If the platform doesn't support it, then don't even try.
- The receiver goes through and creates hard links (do_hard_links)
- after all data has been written, but before directory permissions
- are set.
+ If running as non-root, then don't fail, just give a warning.
+ (There was a thread about this a while ago?)
- At the moment device and inum are sent as 4-byte integers, which
- will probably cause problems on large filesystems. On Linux the
- kernel uses 64-bit ino_t's internally, and people will soon have
- filesystems big enough to use them. We ought to follow NFS4 in
- using 64-bit device and inode identification, perhaps with a
- protocol version bump.
+ http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-August/thread.html
+ http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-September/thread.html
- Once we've seen all the names for a particular file, we no longer
- need to think about it and we can deallocate the memory.
+ -- --
- We can also have the case where there are links to a file that are
- not in the tree being transferred. There's nothing we can do about
- that. Because we rename the destination into place after writing,
- any hardlinks to the old file are always going to be orphaned. In
- fact that is almost necessary because otherwise we'd get really
- confused if we were generating checksums for one name of a file and
- modifying another.
- At the moment the code seems to make a whole second copy of the file
- list, which seems unnecessary.
+Allow supplementary groups in rsyncd.conf 2002/04/09
- We should have a test case that exercises hard links. Since it
- might be hard to compare ./tls output where the inodes change we
- might need a little program to check whether several names refer to
- the same file.
+ Perhaps allow supplementary groups to be specified in rsyncd.conf;
+ then make the first one the primary gid and all the rest be
+ supplementary gids.
+ -- --
Handling IPv6 on old machines
We could drop the rather large lib/getaddrinfo files.
+ -- --
+
Other IPv6 stuff:
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
- have a static buffer that contains the current function name, or
- some kind of description of what we were trying to do. This is a
- little easier on people than needing to run strace/truss.
-
- "The dungeon collapses! You are killed." Rather than "unexpected
- 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
+Add ACL support 2001/12/02
Transfer ACLs. Need to think of a standard representation.
Probably better not to even try to convert between NT and POSIX.
Possibly can share some code with Samba.
-Empty directories
+ -- --
+
+
+Lazy directory creation
With the current common --include '*/' --exclude '*' pattern, people
can end up with many empty directories. We might avoid this by
lazily creating such directories.
+ -- --
-zlib
- Perhaps don't use our own zlib.
+Conditional -z for old protocols
- Advantages:
-
- - will automatically be up to date with bugfixes in zlib
+ After we get the @RSYNCD greeting from the server, we know it's
+ version but we have not yet sent the command line, so we could just
+ remove the -z option if the server is too old.
- - can leave it out for small rsync on e.g. recovery disks
+ For ssh invocation it's not so simple, because we actually use the
+ command line to start the remote process. However, we only actually
+ do compression in token.c, and we could therefore once we discover
+ the remote version emit an error if it's too old. I'm not sure if
+ that's a good tradeoff or not.
- - 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
-
- Perhaps flush stdout after each filename, so that people trying to
- 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)
- After we get the @RSYNCD greeting from the server, we know it's
- version but we have not yet sent the command line, so we could just
- remove the -z option if the server is too old.
-
- For ssh invocation it's not so simple, because we actually use the
- command line to start the remote process. However, we only actually
- do compression in token.c, and we could therefore once we discover
- the remote version emit an error if it's too old. I'm not sure if
- that's a good tradeoff or not.
-
-
-proxy authentication
+proxy authentication 2002/01/23
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
+ -- --
+
+
+SOCKS 2002/01/23
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.
+ -- --
+
+
FAT support
rsync to a FAT partition on a Unix machine doesn't work very well at
I guess the code to do this is currently #ifdef'd on Windows;
perhaps we ought to intelligently fall back to it on Unix too.
+ -- --
-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:
+Allow forcing arbitrary permissions 2002/03/12
- 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.
+ 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
(Debian #23628)
+ -- --
---diff
+
+--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15
Allow people to specify the diff command. (Might want to use wdiff,
gnudiff, etc.)
Security interactions with daemon mode?
- (Suggestion from david.e.sewell)
+ -- --
-Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295)
+Add daemon --no-detach and --no-fork options
- A bit hard to believe, but apparently it happens.
+ Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a
+ daemon-monitoring process that tries to restart the service when the
+ parent exits.
+ -- --
-Check "refuse options works"
+DOCUMENTATION --------------------------------------------------------
- We need a test case for this...
+Update README
- Was this broken when we changed to popt?
+ -- --
-PERFORMANCE ----------------------------------------------------------
+Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site
-MD4 file_sum
+ -- --
- If we're doing a local transfer, or using -W, then perhaps don't
- send the file checksum. If we're doing a local transfer, then
- calculating MD4 checksums uses 90% of CPU and is unlikely to be
- useful.
- Indeed for transfers over zlib or ssh we can also rely on the
- transport to have quite strong protection against corruption.
+Update web site from CVS
- Perhaps we should have an option to disable this, analogous to
---whole-file, although it would default to disabled. The file
-checksum takes up a definite space in the protocol -- we can either
-set it to 0, or perhaps just leave it out.
+ -- --
-MD4
- Perhaps borrow an assembler MD4 from someone?
+Perhaps redo manual as SGML
- Make sure we call MD4 with properly-sized blocks whenever possible
- to avoid copying into the residue region?
+ The man page is getting rather large, and there is more information
+ that ought to be added.
-String area code
+ TexInfo source is probably a dying format.
- Test whether this is actually faster than just using malloc(). If
- it's not (anymore), throw it out.
-
+ Linuxdoc looks like the most likely contender. I know DocBook is
+ favoured by some people, but it's so bloody verbose, even with emacs
+ support.
-PLATFORMS ------------------------------------------------------------
+ -- --
-Win32
+LOGGING --------------------------------------------------------------
- Don't detach, because this messes up --srvany.
+Make dry run list all updates 2002/04/03
+
+ --dry-run is too dry
+
+ Mark Santcroos points out that -n fails to list files which have
+ only metadata changes, though it probably should.
+
+ There may be a Debian bug about this 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.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Improve error messages
+
+ If we hang or get SIGINT, then explain where we were up to. Perhaps
+ have a static buffer that contains the current function name, or
+ some kind of description of what we were trying to do. This is a
+ little easier on people than needing to run strace/truss.
+
+ "The dungeon collapses! You are killed." Rather than "unexpected
+ 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.
- http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00234.html
-DEVELOPMENT ----------------------------------------------------------
+ -- --
-Splint
+
+Better statistics: Rasmus 2002/03/08
+
+ <Rasmus>
+ 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>
+ nice idea there is --stats but at the moment it's very
+ tridge-oriented rather than user-friendly it would be
+ nice to improve it that would also work well with
+ --dryrun
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Perhaps flush stdout like syslog
+
+ Perhaps flush stdout after each filename, so that people trying to
+ monitor progress in a log file can do so more easily. See
+ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=48108
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Log deamon sessions that just list modules
+
+ At the connections that just get a list of modules are not logged,
+ but they should be.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Log child death on signal
+
+ 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)
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Log errors with function that reports process of origin
+
+ Use a separate function for reporting errors; prefix it with
+ "rsync:" or "rsync(remote)", or perhaps even "rsync(local
+ generator): ".
+
+ -- --
+
+
+verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20
+
+ Indicate whether files are new, updated, or deleted
+
+ At end of transfer, show how many files were or were not transferred
+ correctly.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Add reason for transfer to file logging
+
+ Explain *why* every file is transferred or not (e.g. "local mtime
+ 123123 newer than 1283198")
+
+ -- --
+
+
+debugging of daemon 2002/04/08
+
+ Add an rsyncd.conf parameter to turn on debugging on the server.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+internationalization
+
+ Change to using gettext(). Probably need to ship this for platforms
+ that don't have it.
+
+ Solicit translations.
+
+ Does anyone care? Before we bother modifying the code, we ought to
+ get the manual translated first, because that's possibly more useful
+ and at any rate demonstrates desire.
+
+ -- --
+
+DEVELOPMENT --------------------------------------------------------
+
+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.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Use generic zlib 2002/02/25
+
+ 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.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+TDB: 2002/03/12
+
+ 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.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Splint 2002/03/12
Build rsync with SPLINT to try to find security holes. Add
annotations as necessary. Keep track of the number of warnings
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
http://devel-home.kde.org/~sewardj/
-Release script
+ -- --
+
+
+Create release script
- Update spec files
+ Script would:
- Build tar file; upload
+ Update spec files
- Send announcement to mailing list and c.o.l.a.
+ Build tar file; upload
+
+ Send announcement to mailing list and c.o.l.a.
- Make freshmeat announcement
+ Make freshmeat announcement
- Update web site
+ Update web site
+ -- --
-TESTING --------------------------------------------------------------
+Add machines to build farm
-Cross-test versions
+ Cygwin (on different versions of Win32?)
- 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 both up and down from the current release to
- all old versions.
+ HP-UX variants (via HP?)
- We might need to omit broken old versions, or versions in which
- particular functionality is broken
+ SCO
- 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 on kernel source
+ -- --
- Download all versions of kernel; unpack, sync between them. Also
- sync between uncompressed tarballs. Compare directories after
- transfer.
+PERFORMANCE ----------------------------------------------------------
- Use local mode; ssh; daemon; --whole-file and --no-whole-file.
+File list structure in memory
- Use awk to pull out the 'speedup' number for each transfer. Make
- sure it is >= x.
+ 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.)
-Test large files
+ It might also reduce memory use in storing repeated directory names
+ -- again I'm not sure this is a problem.
- Sparse and non-sparse
+ -- --
-Mutator program
- Insert bytes, delete bytes, swap blocks, ...
+Traverse just one directory at a time
-configure option to enable dangerous tests
+ Traverse just one directory at a time. Tridge says it's possible.
-If tests are skipped, say why.
+ At the moment rsync reads the whole file list into memory at the
+ start, which makes us use a lot of memory and also not pipeline
+ network access as much as we could.
-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
+Hard-link handling
-Separate makefile target to run rough tests -- or perhaps just run
-them every time?
+ At the moment hardlink handling is very expensive, so it's off by
+ default. It does not need to be so.
-Test "refuse options" works
+ 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.
- What about for --recursive?
+ We can rule out hardlinked directories since they will probably
+ screw us up in all kinds of ways. They simply should not be used.
- If you specify an unrecognized option here, you should get an error.
+ At the moment rsync only cares about hardlinks to regular files. I
+ guess you could also use them for sockets, devices and other beasts,
+ but I have not seen them.
+ When trying to reproduce hard links, we only need to worry about
+ files that have more than one name (nlinks>1 && !S_ISDIR).
-DOCUMENTATION --------------------------------------------------------
+ The basic point of this is to discover alternate names that refer to
+ the same file. All operations, including creating the file and
+ writing modifications to it need only to be done for the first name.
+ For all later names, we just create the link and then leave it
+ alone.
-Update README
+ If hard links are to be preserved:
-Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site
+ Before the generator/receiver fork, the list of files is received
+ from the sender (recv_file_list), and a table for detecting hard
+ links is built.
-Update web site from CVS
+ The generator looks for hard links within the file list and does
+ not send checksums for them, though it does send other metadata.
+ The sender sends the device number and inode with file entries, so
+ that files are uniquely identified.
-Perhaps redo manual as SGML
+ The receiver goes through and creates hard links (do_hard_links)
+ after all data has been written, but before directory permissions
+ are set.
- The man page is getting rather large, and there is more information
- that ought to be added.
+ At the moment device and inum are sent as 4-byte integers, which
+ will probably cause problems on large filesystems. On Linux the
+ kernel uses 64-bit ino_t's internally, and people will soon have
+ filesystems big enough to use them. We ought to follow NFS4 in
+ using 64-bit device and inode identification, perhaps with a
+ protocol version bump.
- TexInfo source is probably a dying format.
+ Once we've seen all the names for a particular file, we no longer
+ need to think about it and we can deallocate the memory.
- Linuxdoc looks like the most likely contender. I know DocBook is
- favoured by some people, but it's so bloody verbose, even with emacs
- support.
+ We can also have the case where there are links to a file that are
+ not in the tree being transferred. There's nothing we can do about
+ that. Because we rename the destination into place after writing,
+ any hardlinks to the old file are always going to be orphaned. In
+ fact that is almost necessary because otherwise we'd get really
+ confused if we were generating checksums for one name of a file and
+ modifying another.
+ At the moment the code seems to make a whole second copy of the file
+ list, which seems unnecessary.
-BUILD FARM -----------------------------------------------------------
+ We should have a test case that exercises hard links. Since it
+ might be hard to compare ./tls output where the inodes change we
+ might need a little program to check whether several names refer to
+ the same file.
-Add machines
+ -- --
- Cygwin (on different versions of Win32?)
- HP-UX variants (via HP?)
+Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08
- SCO
+ If we're doing a local transfer, or using -W, then perhaps don't
+ send the file checksum. If we're doing a local transfer, then
+ calculating MD4 checksums uses 90% of CPU and is unlikely to be
+ useful.
+ Indeed for transfers over zlib or ssh we can also rely on the
+ transport to have quite strong protection against corruption.
-LOGGING --------------------------------------------------------------
+ Perhaps we should have an option to disable this,
+ analogous to --whole-file, although it would default to
+ disabled. The file checksum takes up a definite space in
+ the protocol -- we can either set it to 0, or perhaps just
+ leave it out.
- Perhaps flush stdout after each filename, so that people trying to
- 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.
+Accelerate MD4
- Keep stderr and stdout properly separated (Debian #23626)
+ Perhaps borrow an assembler MD4 from someone?
- Use a separate function for reporting errors; prefix it with
- "rsync:" or "rsync(remote)", or perhaps even "rsync(local
- generator): ".
+ Make sure we call MD4 with properly-sized blocks whenever possible
+ to avoid copying into the residue region?
-verbose output
-
- Indicate whether files are new, updated, or deleted
+ -- --
- At end of transfer, show how many files were or were not transferred
- correctly.
--vv
+String area code
- Explain *why* every file is transferred or not (e.g. "local mtime
- 123123 newer than 1283198")
+ Test whether this is actually faster than just using malloc(). If
+ it's not (anymore), throw it out.
+ -- --
-debugging of daemon
+TESTING --------------------------------------------------------------
- Add an rsyncd.conf parameter to turn on debugging on the server.
+Torture test
+ Something that just keeps running rsync continuously over a data set
+ likely to generate problems.
+ -- --
-NICE -----------------------------------------------------------------
---no-detach and --no-fork options
+Cross-test versions 2001/08/22
- Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a
- daemon-monitoring process that tries to restart the service when the
- parent exits.
+ 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 both up and down
+ from the current release to all old versions.
-hang/timeout friendliness
+ Run current rsync versions against significant past releases.
-internationalization
+ We might need to omit broken old versions, or versions in which
+ particular functionality is broken
- Change to using gettext(). Probably need to ship this for platforms
- that don't have it.
+ 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.
- Solicit translations.
+ The new --protocol option may help in this.
- Does anyone care? Before we bother modifying the code, we ought to
- get the manual translated first, because that's possibly more useful
- and at any rate demonstrates desire.
+ -- --
+
+
+Test on kernel source
+
+ Download all versions of kernel; unpack, sync between them. Also
+ sync between uncompressed tarballs. Compare directories after
+ transfer.
+
+ Use local mode; ssh; daemon; --whole-file and --no-whole-file.
+
+ Use awk to pull out the 'speedup' number for each transfer. Make
+ sure it is >= x.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Test large files
+
+ Sparse and non-sparse
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Create mutator program for testing
+
+ Insert bytes, delete bytes, swap blocks, ...
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Create configure option to enable dangerous tests
+
+ -- --
+
+
+If tests are skipped, say why.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Test daemon feature to disallow particular options.
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Create pipe program for testing
+
+ Create pipe program that makes slow/jerky connections for
+ testing Versions of read() and write() that corrupt the
+ stream, or abruptly fail
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Create test makefile target for some tests
+
+ Separate makefile target to run rough tests -- or perhaps
+ just run them every time?
+
+ -- --
+
+
+Test "refuse options" works
+
+ What about for --recursive?
+
+ If you specify an unrecognized option here, you should get an error.
+
+ We need a test case for this...
+
+ Was this broken when we changed to popt?
+
+ -- --
+
+RELATED PROJECTS -----------------------------------------------------
rsyncsh
current host, directory and so on. We can probably even do
completion of remote filenames.
+ -- --
-RELATED PROJECTS -----------------------------------------------------
http://rsync.samba.org/rsync-and-debian/
+
+ -- --
+
+
rsyncable gzip patch
Exhaustive, tortuous testing
Cleanups?
+ -- --
+
+
rsyncsplit as alternative to real integration with gzip?
+ -- --
+
+
reverse rsync over HTTP Range
Goswin Brederlow suggested this on Debian; I think tridge and I
talked about it previous in relation to rproxy.
+ -- --
Matt McCutchen's Web Site / rsync / rsync.git / commitdiff