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@@ -0,0 +1,528 @@ +-*- indented-text -*- + +FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ +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 +proxy authentication 2002/01/23 +SOCKS 2002/01/23 +FAT support +--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15 +Add daemon --no-fork option +Create more granular verbosity 2003/05/15 + +DOCUMENTATION -------------------------------------------------------- +Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site +Perhaps redo manual as SGML + +LOGGING -------------------------------------------------------------- +Memory accounting +Improve error messages +Better statistics Rasmus 2002/03/08 +Perhaps flush stdout like syslog +Log child death on signal +verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20 +internationalization + +DEVELOPMENT -------------------------------------------------------- +Handling duplicate names +Use generic zlib 2002/02/25 +TDB 2002/03/12 +Splint 2002/03/12 + +PERFORMANCE ---------------------------------------------------------- +Traverse just one directory at a time +Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08 +Accelerate MD4 + +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 +Create pipe program for testing +Create test makefile target for some tests + +RELATED PROJECTS ----------------------------------------------------- +rsyncsh +https://rsync.samba.org/rsync-and-debian/ +rsyncable gzip patch +rsyncsplit as alternative to real integration with gzip? +reverse rsync over HTTP Range + + + +FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ + + +Use chroot only if supported + + 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?) + + https://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-August/thread.html + https://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-September/thread.html + + -- -- + + +Allow supplementary groups in rsyncd.conf 2002/04/09 + + 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 + + The KAME IPv6 patch is nice in theory but has proved a bit of a + nightmare in practice. The basic idea of their patch is that rsync + is rewritten to use the new getaddrinfo()/getnameinfo() interface, + rather than gethostbyname()/gethostbyaddr() as in rsync 2.4.6. + Systems that don't have the new interface are handled by providing + our own implementation in lib/, which is selectively linked in. + + The problem with this is that it is really hard to get right on + platforms that have a half-working implementation, so redefining + these functions clashes with system headers, and leaving them out + breaks. This affects at least OSF/1, RedHat 5, and Cobalt, which + are moderately important. + + Perhaps the simplest solution would be to have two different files + implementing the same interface, and choose either the new or the + old API. This is probably necessary for systems that e.g. have + IPv6, but gethostbyaddr() can't handle it. The Linux manpage claims + this is currently the case. + + In fact, our internal sockets interface (things like + open_socket_out(), etc) is much narrower than the getaddrinfo() + interface, and so probably simpler to get right. In addition, the + old code is known to work well on old machines. + + We could drop the rather large lib/getaddrinfo files. + + -- -- + + +Other IPv6 stuff + + Implement suggestions from http://www.kame.net/newsletter/19980604/ + and ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/RFC/rfc2553.txt + + If a host has multiple addresses, then listen try to connect to all + in order until we get through. (getaddrinfo may return multiple + addresses.) This is kind of implemented already. + + Possibly also when starting as a server we may need to listen on + multiple passive addresses. This might be a bit harder, because we + may need to select on all of them. Hm. + + -- -- + + +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. + NOTE: there is a patch that implements this in the "patches" subdir. + + -- -- + + +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 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 + the moment. I think we get errors about invalid filenames and + perhaps also trying to do atomic renames. + + 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. + + -- -- + + +--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15 + + 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? + + -- -- + + +Add daemon --no-fork option + + Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a + daemon-monitoring process that tries to restart the service when the + parent exits. + + -- -- + + +Create more granular verbosity 2003/05/15 + + Control output with the --report option. + + The option takes as a single argument (no whitespace) a + comma delimited lists of keywords. + + This would separate debugging from "logging" as well as + fine grained selection of statistical reporting and what + actions are logged. + + https://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2003-May/006059.html + + -- -- + +DOCUMENTATION -------------------------------------------------------- + + +Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site + + -- -- + + +Perhaps redo manual as SGML + + The man page is getting rather large, and there is more information + that ought to be added. + + TexInfo source is probably a dying format. + + 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. + + -- -- + +LOGGING -------------------------------------------------------------- + + +Memory accounting + + At exit, show how much memory was used for the file list, etc. + + We also do a weird 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. + + -- -- + + +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 + https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=48108 + + -- -- + + +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. + + -- -- + + +verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20 + + 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 + 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 + + Some folks would like rsync to be deterministic in how it handles + duplicate names that come from mering multiple source directories + into a single destination directory; e.g. the last name wins. We + could do this by switching our sort algorithm to one that will + guarantee that the names won't be reordered. Alternately, we could + assign an ever-increasing number to each item as we insert it into + the list and then make sure that we leave the largest number when + cleaning the file list (see clean_flist()). Another solution would + be to add a hash table, and thus never put any duplicate names into + the file list (and bump the protocol to handle this). + + -- -- + + +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. + + -- -- + + +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 + 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. + + -- -- + +PERFORMANCE ---------------------------------------------------------- + +Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08 + + 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. + + We should not allow it to be disabled separately from -W, though + as it is the only thing that lets us know when the rsync algorithm + got out of sync and messed the file up (i.e. if the basis file + changed between checksum generation and reception). + + -- -- + + +Accelerate MD4 + + Perhaps borrow an assembler MD4 from someone? + + Make sure we call MD4 with properly-sized blocks whenever possible + to avoid copying into the residue region? + + -- -- + +TESTING -------------------------------------------------------------- + +Torture test + + Something that just keeps running rsync continuously over a data set + likely to generate problems. + + -- -- + + +Cross-test versions 2001/08/22 + + 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. + + Run current rsync versions against significant past releases. + + We might need to omit broken old versions, or versions in which + particular functionality is broken + + 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. + + The new --protocol option may help in this. + + -- -- + + +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 + + -- -- + + +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? + + -- -- + +RELATED PROJECTS ----------------------------------------------------- + +rsyncsh + + Write a small emulation of interactive ftp as a Pythonn program + that calls rsync. Commands such as "cd", "ls", "ls *.c" etc map + 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. + + -- -- + + +https://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. + + Addendum: It looks like someone is working on a version of this: + + http://zsync.moria.org.uk/ + + -- -- + |