path: root/NEWS

NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (UNRELEASED)
Protocol: 29 (unchanged)
Changes since 2.6.6:

  OUTPUT CHANGES:

    - The letter 'D' in the itemized output was being used for both devices
      (character or block) as well as other special files (such as fifos and
      named sockets).  This has changed to separate non-device special files
      under the 'S' designation (e.g. "cS+++++++ path/fifo").  See also the
      "--specials" option, below.

    - The way rsync escapes unreadable characters has changed.  First, rsync
      now has support for recognizing valid multibyte character sequences in
      your current locale, allowing it to escape fewer characters than before
      for a locale such as UTF-8.  Second, it now uses an escape idiom of
      "\#123", which is the literal string "\#" followed by exactly 3 octal
      digits.  Rsync no longer doubles a backslash character in a filename
      (e.g. it used to output "foo\\bar" when copying "foo\bar") -- now it only
      escapes a backslash that is followed by a hash-sign and 3 digits (0-9)
      (e.g. it will output "foo\#134#789" when copying "foo\#789").  See also
      the --8-bit-output (-8) option, mentioned below.

      Script writers: the local rsync is the one that outputs escaped names,
      so if you need to support unescaping of filenames for older rsyncs, I'd
      suggest that you parse the output of "rsync --version" and only use the
      old unescaping rules for 2.6.5 and 2.6.6.

  BUG FIXES:

    - Fixed a really old bug that caused --checksum (-c) to checksum all the
      files encountered during the delete scan (ouch).

    - Fixed a potential hang in a remote generator:  when the receiver gets a
      read-error on the socket, it now signals the generator about this so that
      the generator does not try to send any of the terminating error messages
      to the client (avoiding a potential hang in some setups).

    - Made hard-links work with symlinks and devices again.

    - If the sender gets an early EOF reading a source file, we propagate this
      error to the receiver so that it can discard the file and try requesting
      it again (which is the existing behavior for other kinds of read errors).

    - If a device-file/special-file changes permissions, rsync now updates the
      permissions without recreating the file.

    - If the user specifies a remote-host for both the source and destination,
      we now output a syntax error rather than trying to open the destination
      hostspec as a filename.

    - When --inplace creates a new destination file, rsync now creates it with
      permissions 0600 instead of 0000 -- this makes restarting possible when
      the transfer gets interrupted in the middle of sending a new file.

    - Reject the combination of --inplace and --sparse since the sparse-output
      algorithm doesn't work when overwriting existing data.

    - Fixed the directory name in the error that is output when pop_dir()
      fails.

    - Really fixed the parsing of a "!" entry in .cvsignore files this time.

    - If the generator gets a stat() error on a file, output it (this used to
      require at least -vv for the error to be seen).

    - If waitpid() fails or the child rsync didn't exit cleanly, we now handle
      the exit status properly and generate a better error.

    - Fixed some glitches in the double-verbose output when using --copy-dest,
      --link-dest, or --compare-dest.  Also improved how the verbose output
      handles hard-links (within the transfer) that had an up-to-date alternate
      "dest" file, and copied files (via --copy-dest).

    - Fixed the matching of the dont-compress items (e.g. *.gz) against files
      that have a path component containing a slash.

    - If code reading a filter/exclude file an EINTR error, rsync now clears
      the error flag on the file handle so it can keep on reading.

    - If --relative is active, the sending side cleans up trailing "/" or "/."
      suffixes to avoid triggering a bug in older rsync versions.  Also, we now
      reject a ".." dir if it would be sent as a relative dir.

    - If a non-directory is in the way of a directory and rsync is run with
      --dry-run and --delete, rsync no longer complains about not being able
      to opendir() the not-yet present directory.

    - When --list-only is used and a non-existent local destination dir was
      also specified as a destination, rsync no longer generates a warning
      about being unable to create the missing directory.

    - Fixed some problems with --relative --no-implied-dirs when the
      destination directory did not yet exist:  we can now create a symlink or
      device when it is the first thing in the missing dir, and --fuzzy no
      longer complains about being unable to open the missing dir.

    - Fixed a bug where the --copy-links option would not affect implied
      directories (see --relative) without --copy-unsafe-links.

    - Got rid of the need for --force to be used in some circumstances with
      --delete-after (making it consistent with --delete-before/-during).

    - Rsync now ignores the SIGXFSZ signal, just in case your OS sends this
      when a file is too large (rsync handles the write error).

  ENHANCEMENTS:

    - Added the --append option that makes rsync append data onto files that
      are longer on the source than the destination (this includes new files).

    - Added the --min-size=SIZE option to exclude small files from the
      transfer.

    - Added the --compress-level option to allow you to set how aggressive
      rsync's compression should be (this option implies --compress).

    - Enhanced the parsing of the SIZE value for --min-size and --max-size to
      allow easy entry of multiples of 1000 (instead of just multiples of 1024)
      and off-by-one values too (e.g. --max-size=8mb-1).

    - Added the --8-bit-output (-8) option, which tells rsync to avoid escaping
      high-bit characters that it thinks are unreadable in the current locale.

    - The new option --human-readable (-h) changes the output of --progress,
      --stats, and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read.  If repeated,
      the units become powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000.  (The old
      meaning of -h, as a shorthand for --help, still works as long as you
      just use it on its own, as in "rsync -h".)

    - If lutimes() and/or lchmod() are around, use them to allow the
      preservation of attributes on symlinks.

    - The --link-dest option now affects symlinks and devices (when possible).

    - Added two config items to the rsyncd.conf parsing:  "pre-xfer exec" and
      "post-xfer exec".  These allow a command to be specified on a per-module
      basis that will be run before and/or after a daemon-mode transfer.  (See
      the man page for a list of the environment variables that are set with
      information about the transfer.)

    - When using the --relative option, you can now insert a dot dir in
      the source path to indicate where the replication of the source dirs
      should start.  For example, if you specify a source path of
      rsync://host/module/foo/bar/./baz/dir with -R, rsync will now only
      replicate the "baz/dir" part of the source path (note: a trailing
      dot dir is unaffected unless it also has a trailing slash).

    - Added some new --no-FOO options that make it easier to override unwanted
      implied or default options.  For example, "-a --no-o" (aka "--archive
      --no-owner") can be used to turn off the preservation of file ownership
      that is implied by -a.

    - Added the --chmod=MODE option that allows the destination permissions to
      be changed from the source permissions.  E.g. --chmod=g+w,o-rwx

    - Added the "incoming chmod" and "outgoing chmod" daemon options that allow
      a module to specify what permissions changes should be applied to all
      files copied to and from the daemon.

    - Allow the --temp-dir option to be specified when starting a daemon, which
      sets the default temporary directory for incoming files.

    - If --delete is combined with --dirs without --recursive, rsync will now
      delete in any directory whose content is being synchronized.

    - If --backup is combined with --delete without --backup-dir (and without
      --delete-excluded), we add a "protect" filter-rule to ensure that files
      with the backup suffix are not deleted.

    - The file-count stats that are output by --progress were improved to
      better indicate what the numbers mean.  For instance, the output:
      "(xfer#5, to-check=8383/9999)" indicates that this was the fifth file
      to be transferred, and we still need to check 8383 more files out of
      a total of 9999.

    - The include/exclude code now allows a dir/*** directive (with 3 trailing
      stars) to match both the dir itself as well as all the content below the
      dir (dir/** would not match the dir).

    - Added the --prune-empty-dirs (-m) option that makes the receiving rsync
      discard empty chains of directories from the file-list.  This makes it
      easier to selectively copy files from a source hierarchy and end up with
      just the directories needed to hold the resulting files.

    - If the --itemize-changes (-i) option is repeated, rsync now includes
      unchanged files in the itemized output (similar to -vv, but without all
      the other verbose messages that can get in the way).  Of course, the
      client must be version 2.6.7 for this to work, but the remote rsync only
      needs to be 2.6.7 if you're pushing files.

    - Added the --specials option to tell rsync to copy non-device special
      files (which rsync now attempts even as a normal user).  The --devices
      option now requests the copying of just devices (character and block).
      The -D option still requests both (e.g. --devices and --specials), -a
      still implies -D, and non-root users still get a silent downgrade that
      omits device copying.

    - Added the --super option to make the receiver always attempt super-user
      activities.  This is useful for systems that allow things such as devices
      to be created or ownership to be set without being UID 0, and is also
      useful for someone who wants to ensure that errors will be output if the
      receiving rsync isn't being run as root.

    - Added the --sockopts option for those few who want to customize the TCP
      options used to contact a daemon rsync.

    - Added a way for the --temp-dir option to be combined with a partial-dir
      setting that lets rsync avoid non-atomic updates (for those times when
      --temp-dir is not being used because space is tight).

    - A new support script, files-to-excludes, will transform a list of files
      into a set of include/exclude directives that will copy those files.

    - A new option, --executability (-E) can be used to preserve just the
      execute bit on files, for those times when using the --perms option is
      not desired.

    - The daemon now logs each connection and also each module-list request
      that it receives.

    - New log-format options: %M (modtime), %U (uid), %G (gid), and %B
      (permission bits, e.g. "rwxr-xrwt").

    - The --dry-run option no longer forces the enabling of --verbose.

    - The --remove-sent-files option now does a better job of incrementally
      removing the sent files on the sending side (older versions tended to
      clump up all the removals at the end).

    - A daemon now supersedes its minimal SIGCHLD handler with the standard
      PID-remembering version after forking to handle the request.  This
      ensures that the generator can get the child-exit status from the
      receiver.

    - Use of the --bwlimit option no longer interferes with the remote rsync
      sending error messages about invalid/refused options.

    - Rsync no longer returns a usage error when used with one local source arg
      and no destination: this now implies the --list-only option, just like
      the comparable situation with a remote source arg.

    - Added the --copy-dirlinks option, a more limited version of --copy-links.

    - The sender's hash table for checksum information was improved to make it
      more efficient when updating really large files (starting from around
      2.5GB, but most visibly for much larger files).  This prevents the hash
      table from getting overloaded, which saves CPU time (and real time) at
      the expense of a little extra memory (and it actually saves memory for
      normal sized files).

    - Various documentation improvements, including: a better synopsis, some
      improved examples, a better discussion of the presence and absence of
      --perms (including how it interacts with the new --executability and
      --chmod options), an extended discussion of --temp-dir, an improved
      discussion of --partial-dir, a better description of rsync's pattern
      matching characters, an improved --no-implied-dirs section, and the
      documenting of what the --stats option outputs.

    - Various new and updated diffs in the patches dir, including: acls.diff,
      xattrs.diff, atimes.diff, detect-renamed.diff, and slp.diff.

  INTERNAL:

    - We now use sigaction() and sigprocmask() if possible, and fall back on
      signal() if not.  Using sigprocmask() ensures that rsync enables all the
      signals that it needs, just in case it was started in a masked state.

    - Some buffer sizes were expanded a bit, particularly on systems where
      MAXPATHLEN is overly small (e.g. cygwin).

    - If io_printf() tries to format more data than fits in the buffer, exit
      with an error instead of transmitting a truncated buffer.

    - If a va_copy macro is defined, lib/snprintf.c will use it when defining
      the VA_COPY macro.

    - Reduced the amount of stack memory needed for each level of directory
      recursion by nearly MAXPATHLEN bytes.

    - The wildmatch function was extended to allow an array of strings to be
      supplied as the string to match.  This allows the exclude code to do less
      string copying.

    - Got rid of the safe_fname() function (and all the myriad calls) and
      replaced it with a new function in the log.c code that filters all the
      output going to the terminal.

    - Unified the f_name() and the f_name_to() functions.

  DEVELOPER RELATED:

    - The diffs in the patches dir now require "patch -p1 <DIFF" instead of
      the previous -p0.  Also, the version included in the release tar now
      affect generated files (e.g. configure, rsync.1, proto.h, etc.), so
      it is no longer necessary to run autoconf and/or yodl unless you're
      applying a patch that was checked out from CVS.

    - Several diffs in the patches dir now use the proper --enable-FOO
      configure option instead of --with-FOO to turn on the inclusion of
      the newly patched feature.

    - There is a new script, "prepare-source" than can be used to update the
      various generated files (proto.h, configure, etc.) even before configure
      has created the Makefile (this is mainly useful when patching the source
      with a patch that doesn't affect generated files).

    - The testsuite now sets HOME so that it won't be affected by a file such
      as ~/.popt.