New unison beta-release (2.17) available; 2.13 promoted to stable

Benjamin Pierce <[email protected]> Thu, 11 Aug 2005 23:17:46 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.network.unison.general,gmane.network.unison.announce
Message-ID <[email protected]>
The Unison team is pleased to announce a new beta-release, version
2.17.  The changes in this version are substantial, but mostly
internal: we've completely revamped the way backups are handled,
making the code simpler and more robust (probably modulo a few growing
pains :-), and we've added a few new options to make backups easier to
configure.  Also, we've revamped the support for external merge
programs, so that Unison will be able to use instances of Harmony as
external merge tools.

Version 2.13.16, which has been working well for weeks, is now  
promoted to stable.

Grab it from here:
    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download.html

Regards,

    Benjamin

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---

Changes in Version 2.17.1

    Changes since 2.13.0:
      * The features for performing backups and for invoking external
        merge programs have been completely rewritten by Stephane  
Lescuyer
        (thanks, Stephane!). The user-visible functionality should not
        change, but the internals have been rationalized and there are a
        number of new features. See the manual (in particular, the
        description of the backupXXX preferences) for details.
      * Incorporated patches for ipv6 support, contributed by Samuel
        Thibault. (Note that, due to a bug in the released OCaml 3.08.3
        compiler, this code will not actually work with ipv6 unless
        compiled with the CVS version of the OCaml compiler, where  
the bug
        has been fixed; however, ipv4 should continue to work normally.)
      * OSX interface:
           + Incorporated Ben Willmore's cool new icon for the Mac UI.
      * Small fixes:
           + Fixed off by one error in month numbers (in printed dates)
             reported by Bob Burger

    Changes since 2.12.0:
      * New convention for release numbering: Releases will continue  
to be
        given numbers of the form X.Y.Z, but, from now on, just the  
major
        version number (X.Y) will be considered significant when  
checking
        compatibility between client and server versions. The third
        component of the version number will be used only to identify
        "patch levels" of releases.
        This change goes hand in hand with a change to the procedure for
        making new releases. Candidate releases will initially be given
        "beta release" status when they are announced for public
        consumption. Any bugs that are discovered will be fixed in a
        separate branch of the source repository (without changing the
        major version number) and new tarballs re-released as needed.  
When
        this process converges, the patched beta version will be dubbed
        stable.
      * Warning (failure in batch mode) when one path is completely
        emptied. This prevents Unison from deleting everything on one
        replica when the other disappear.
      * Fix diff bug (where no difference is shown the first time the  
diff
        command is given).
      * User interface changes:
           + Improved workaround for button focus problem (GTK2 UI)
           + Put leading zeroes in date fields
           + More robust handling of character encodings in GTK2 UI
           + Changed format of modification time displays, from modified
             at hh:mm:ss on dd MMM, yyyy to modified on yyyy-mm-dd
             hh:mm:ss
           + Changed time display to include seconds (so that people on
             FAT filesystems will not be confused when Unison tries to
             update a file time to an odd number of seconds and the
             filesystem truncates it to an even number!)
           + Use the diff "-u" option by default when showing  
differences
             between files (the output is more readable)
           + In text mode, pipe the diff output to a pager if the
             environment variable PAGER is set
           + Bug fixes and cleanups in ssh password prompting. Now works
             with the GTK2 UI under Linux. (Hopefully the Mac OS X  
one is
             not broken!)
           + Include profile name in the GTK2 window name
           + Added bindings ',' (same as '<') and '.' (same as '>')  
in the
             GTK2 UI
      * Mac GUI:
           + actions like < and > scroll to the next item as necessary.
           + Restart has a menu item and keyboard shortcut (command-R).
           + Added a command-line tool for Mac OS X. It can be installed
             from the Unison menu.
           + New icon.
           + Handle the "help" command-line argument properly.
           + Handle profiles given on the command line properly.
           + When a profile has been selected, the profile dialog is
             replaced by a "connecting" message while the connection is
             being made. This gives better feedback.
           + Size of left and right columns is now large enough so that
             "PropsChanged" is not cut off.
      * Minor changes:
           + Disable multi-threading when both roots are local
           + Improved error handling code. In particular, make sure all
             files are closed in case of a transient failure
           + Under Windows, use $UNISON for home directory as a last
             resort (it was wrongly moved before $HOME and  
$USERPROFILE in
             Unison 2.12.0)
           + Reopen the logfile if its name changes (profile change)
           + Double-check that permissions and modification times have
             been properly set: there are some combination of OS and
             filesystem on which setting them can fail in a silent way.
           + Check for bad Windows filenames for pure Windows
             synchronization also (not just cross architecture
             synchronization). This way, filenames containing  
backslashes,
             which are not correctly handled by unison, are rejected  
right
             away.
           + Attempt to resolve issues with synchronizing modification
             times of read-only files under Windows
           + Ignore chmod failures when deleting files
           + Ignore trailing dots in filenames in case insensitive mode
           + Proper quoting of paths, files and extensions ignored using
             the UI
           + The strings CURRENT1 and CURRENT2 are now correctly
             substitued when they occur in the diff preference
           + Improvements to syncing resource forks between Macs via a
             non-Mac system.

    Changes since 2.10.2:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * Source code availability: The Unison sources are now managed  
using
        Subversion. One nice side-effect is that anonymous checkout  
is now
        possible, like this:
         svn co https://cvs.cis.upenn.edu:3690/svnroot/unison/
        We will also continue to export a "developer tarball" of the
        current (modulo one day) sources in the web export directory. To
        receive commit logs for changes to the sources, subscribe to the
        unison-hackers list
        (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/ bcpierce/unison/lists.html).
      * Text user interface:
           + Substantial reworking of the internal logic of the text  
UI to
             make it a bit easier to modify.
           + The dumbtty flag in the text UI is automatically set to  
true
             if the client is running on a Unix system and the EMACS
             environment variable is set to anything other than the  
empty
             string.
      * Native OS X gui:
           + Added a synchronize menu item with keyboard shortcut
           + Added a merge menu item, still needs to be debugged
           + Fixes to compile for Panther
           + Miscellaneous improvements and bugfixes
      * Small changes:
           + Changed the filename checking code to apply to Windows  
only,
             instead of OS X as well.
           + Finder flags now synchronized
           + Fallback in copy.ml for filesystem that do not support  
O_EXCL
           + Changed buffer size for local file copy (was highly
             inefficient with synchronous writes)
           + Ignore chmod failure when deleting a directory
           + Fixed assertion failure when resolving a conflict content
             change / permission changes in favor of the content change.
           + Workaround for transferring large files using rsync.
           + Use buffered I/O for files (this is the only way to open
             files in binary mode under Cygwin).
           + On non-Cygwin Windows systems, the UNISON environment
             variable is now checked first to determine where to look  
for
             Unison's archive and preference files, followed by HOME and
             USERPROFILE in that order. On Unix and Cygwin systems, HOME
             is used.
           + Generalized diff preference so that it can be given  
either as
             just the command name to be used for calculating diffs or
             else a whole command line, containing the strings CURRENT1
             and CURRENT2, which will be replaced by the names of the
             files to be diff'ed before the command is called.
           + Recognize password prompts in some newer versions of ssh.

    Changes since 2.9.20:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * Major functionality changes:
           + Major tidying and enhancement of 'merge' functionality. The
             main user-visible change is that the external merge program
             may either write the merged output to a single new file, as
             before, or it may modify one or both of its input files, or
             it may write two new files. In the latter cases, its
             modifications will be copied back into place on both the
             local and the remote host, and (if the two files are now
             equal) the archive will be updated appropriately. More
             information can be found in the user manual. Thanks to Malo
             Denielou and Alan Schmitt for these improvements.
             Warning: the new merging functionality is not completely
             compatible with old versions! Check the manual for details.
           + Files larger than 2Gb are now supported.
           + Added preliminary (and still somewhat experimental) support
             for the Apple OS X operating system.
                o Resource forks should be transferred correctly.  
(See the
                  manual for details of how this works when  
synchronizing
                  HFS with non-HFS volumes.) Synchronization of file  
type
                  and creator information is also supported.
                o On OSX systems, the name of the directory for storing
                  Unison's archives, preference files, etc., is now
                  determined as follows:
                     # if ~/.unison exists, use it
                     # otherwise, use ~/Library/Application
                       Support/Unison, creating it if necessary.
                o A preliminary native-Cocoa user interface is under
                  construction. This still needs some work, and some  
users
                  experience unpredictable crashes, so it is only for
                  hackers for now. Run make with UISTYLE=mac to build  
this
                  interface.
      * Minor functionality changes:
           + Added an ignorelocks preference, which forces Unison to
             override left-over archive locks. (Setting this  
preference is
             dangerous! Use it only if you are positive you know what  
you
             are doing.)
           + Running with the -timers flag set to true will now show the
             total time taken to check for updates on each directory.
             (This can be helpful for tidying directories to improve
             update detection times.)
           + Added a new preference assumeContentsAreImmutable. If a
             directory matches one of the patterns set in this  
preference,
             then update detection is skipped for files in this  
directory.
             (The purpose is to speed update detection for cases like  
Mail
             folders, which contain lots and lots of immutable files.)
             Also a preference assumeContentsAreImmutableNot, which
             overrides the first, similarly to ignorenot. (Later
             amendment: these preferences are now called immutable and
             immutablenot.)
           + The ignorecase flag has been changed from a boolean to a
             three-valued preference. The default setting, called  
default,
             checks the operating systems running on the client and  
server
             and ignores filename case if either of them is OSX or
             Windows. Setting ignorecase to true or false overrides this
             behavior. If you have been setting ignorecase on the  
command
             line using -ignorecase=true or -ignorecase=false, you will
             need to change to -ignorecase true or -ignorecase false.
           + a new preference, 'repeat', for the text user interface
             (only). If 'repeat' is set to a number, then, after it
             finishes synchronizing, Unison will wait for that many
             seconds and then start over, continuing this way until  
it is
             killed from outside. Setting repeat to true will
             automatically set the batch preference to true.
           + Excel files are now handled specially, so that the  
fastcheck
             optimization is skipped even if the fastcheck flag is set.
             (Excel does some naughty things with modtimes, making this
             optimization unreliable and leading to failures during  
change
             propagation.)
           + The ignorecase flag has been changed from a boolean to a
             three-valued preference. The default setting, called
             'default', checks the operating systems running on the  
client
             and server and ignores filename case if either of them  
is OSX
             or Windows. Setting ignorecase to 'true' or 'false'  
overrides
             this behavior.
           + Added a new preference, 'repeat', for the text user  
interface
             (only, at the moment). If 'repeat' is set to a number,  
then,
             after it finishes synchronizing, Unison will wait for that
             many seconds and then start over, continuing this way until
             it is killed from outside. Setting repeat to true will
             automatically set the batch preference to true.
           + The 'rshargs' preference has been split into 'rshargs' and
             'sshargs' (mainly to make the documentation clearer). In
             fact, 'rshargs' is no longer mentioned in the documentation
             at all, since pretty much everybody uses ssh now anyway.
      * Documentation
           + The web pages have been completely redesigned and
             reorganized. (Thanks to Alan Schmitt for help with this.)
      * User interface improvements
           + Added a GTK2 user interface, capable (among other  
things) of
             displaying filenames in any locale encoding. Kudos to  
Stephen
             Tse for contributing this code!
           + The text UI now prints a list of failed and skipped  
transfers
             at the end of synchronization.
           + Restarting update detection from the graphical UI will  
reload
             the current profile (which in particular will reset the - 
path
             preference, in case it has been narrowed by using the
             "Recheck unsynchronized items" command).
           + Several small improvements to the text user interface,
             including a progress display.
      * Bug fixes (too numerous to count, actually, but here are some):
           + The maxthreads preference works now.
           + Fixed bug where warning message about uname returning an
             unrecognized result was preventing connection to server.  
(The
             warning is no longer printed, and all systems where 'uname'
             returns anything other than 'Darwin' are assumed not to be
             running OS X.)
           + Fixed a problem on OS X that caused some valid file names
             (e.g., those including colons) to be considered invalid.
           + Patched Path.followLink to follow links under cygwin in
             addition to Unix (suggested by Matt Swift).
           + Small change to the storeRootsName function, suggested by
             bliviero at ichips.intel.com, to fix a problem in unison  
with
             the `rootalias' option, which allows you to tell unison  
that
             two roots contain the same files. Rootalias was being  
applied
             after the hosts were sorted, so it wouldn't work  
properly in
             all cases.
           + Incorporated a fix by Dmitry Bely for setting utimes of
             read-only files on Win32 systems.
      * Installation / portability:
           + Unison now compiles with OCaml version 3.07 and later  
out of
             the box.
           + Makefile.OCaml fixed to compile out of the box under  
OpenBSD.
           + a few additional ports (e.g. OpenBSD, Zaurus/IPAQ) are now
             mentioned in the documentation
           + Unison can now be installed easily on OSX systems using the
             Fink package manager

    Changes since 2.9.1:
      * Added a preference maxthreads that can be used to limit the  
number
        of simultaneous file transfers.
      * Added a backupdir preference, which controls where backup files
        are stored.
      * Basic support added for OSX. In particular, Unison now  
recognizes
        when one of the hosts being synchronized is running OSX and
        switches to a case-insensitive treatment of filenames (i.e.,  
'foo'
        and 'FOO' are considered to be the same file). (OSX is not yet
        fully working, however: in particular, files with resource forks
        will not be synchronized correctly.)
      * The same hash used to form the archive name is now also added to
        the names of the temp files created during file transfer. The
        reason for this is that, during update detection, we are  
going to
        silently delete any old temp files that we find along the  
way, and
        we want to prevent ourselves from deleting temp files  
belonging to
        other instances of Unison that may be running in parallel, e.g.
        synchronizing with a different host. Thanks to Ruslan Ermilov  
for
        this suggestion.
      * Several small user interface improvements
      * Documentation
           + FAQ and bug reporting instructions have been split out as
             separate HTML pages, accessible directly from the unison  
web
             page.
           + Additions to FAQ, in particular suggestions about  
performance
             tuning.
      * Makefile
           + Makefile.OCaml now sets UISTYLE=text or UISTYLE=gtk
             automatically, depending on whether it finds lablgtk
             installed
           + Unison should now compile "out of the box" under OSX

    Changes since 2.8.1:
      * Changing profile works again under Windows
      * File movement optimization: Unison now tries to use local copy
        instead of transfer for moved or copied files. It is  
controled by
        a boolean option "xferbycopying".
      * Network statistics window (transfer rate, amount of data
        transferred). [NB: not available in Windows-Cygwin version.]
      * symlinks work under the cygwin version (which is dynamically
        linked).
      * Fixed potential deadlock when synchronizing between Windows and
        Unix
      * Small improvements:
           + If neither the
             tt USERPROFILE nor the
             tt HOME environment variables are set, then Unison will put
             its temporary commit log (called
             tt DANGER.README) into the directory named by the
             tt UNISON environment variable, if any; otherwise it  
will use
             tt C:.
           + alternative set of values for fastcheck: yes = true; no =
             false; default = auto.
           + -silent implies -contactquietly
      * Source code:
           + Code reorganization and tidying. (Started breaking up  
some of
             the basic utility modules so that the non-unison-specific
             stuff can be made available for other projects.)
           + several Makefile and docs changes (for release);
           + further comments in "update.ml";
           + connection information is not stored in global variables
             anymore.

    Changes since 2.7.78:
      * Small bugfix to textual user interface under Unix (to avoid
        leaving the terminal in a bad state where it would not echo  
inputs
        after Unison exited).

    Changes since 2.7.39:
      * Improvements to the main web page (stable and beta version docs
        are now both accessible).
      * User manual revised.
      * Added some new preferences:
           + "sshcmd" and "rshcmd" for specifying paths to ssh and rsh
             programs.
           + "contactquietly" for suppressing the "contacting server"
             message during Unison startup (under the graphical UI).
      * Bug fixes:
           + Fixed small bug in UI that neglected to change the  
displayed
             column headers if loading a new profile caused the roots to
             change.
           + Fixed a bug that would put the text UI into an infinite  
loop
             if it encountered a conflict when run in batch mode.
           + Added some code to try to fix the display of non-Ascii
             characters in filenames on Windows systems in the GTK UI.
             (This code is currently untested--if you're one of the  
people
             that had reported problems with display of non-ascii
             filenames, we'd appreciate knowing if this actually fixes
             things.)
           + `-prefer/-force newer' works properly now. (The bug was
             reported by Sebastian Urbaniak and Sean Fulton.)
      * User interface and Unison behavior:
           + Renamed `Proceed' to `Go' in the graphical UI.
           + Added exit status for the textual user interface.
           + Paths that are not synchronized because of conflicts or
             errors during update detection are now noted in the log  
file.
           + [END] messages in log now use a briefer format
           + Changed the text UI startup sequence so that
             tt ./unison -ui text will use the default profile  
instead of
             failing.
           + Made some improvements to the error messages.
           + Added some debugging messages to remote.ml.

    Changes since 2.7.7:
      * Incorporated, once again, a multi-threaded transport sub-system.
        It transfers several files at the same time, thereby making much
        more effective use of available network bandwidth. Unlike the
        earlier attempt, this time we do not rely on the native thread
        library of OCaml. Instead, we implement a light-weight,
        non-preemptive multi-thread library in OCaml directly. This
        version appears stable.
        Some adjustments to unison are made to accommodate the
        multi-threaded version. These include, in particular, changes to
        the user interface and logging, for example:
           + Two log entries for each transferring task, one for the
             beginning, one for the end.
           + Suppressed warning messages against removing temp files  
left
             by a previous unison run, because warning does not work
             nicely under multi-threading. The temp file names are made
             less likely to coincide with the name of a file created by
             the user. They take the form
             .#<filename>.<serial>.unison.tmp.
      * Added a new command to the GTK user interface: pressing 'f'  
causes
        Unison to start a new update detection phase, using as paths  
just
        those paths that have been detected as changed and not yet  
marked
        as successfully completed. Use this command to quickly restart
        Unison on just the set of paths still needing attention after a
        previous run.
      * Made the ignorecase preference user-visible, and changed the
        initialization code so that it can be manually set to true, even
        if neither host is running Windows. (This may be useful, e.g.,
        when using Unison running on a Unix system with a FAT volume
        mounted.)
      * Small improvements and bug fixes:
           + Errors in preference files now generate fatal errors rather
             than warnings at startup time. (I.e., you can't go on from
             them.) Also, we fixed a bug that was preventing these
             warnings from appearing in the text UI, so some users who
             have been running (unsuspectingly) with garbage in their
             prefs files may now get error reports.
           + Error reporting for preference files now provides file name
             and line number.
           + More intelligible message in the case of identical  
change to
             the same files: "Nothing to do: replicas have been changed
             only in identical ways since last sync."
           + Files with prefix '.#' excluded when scanning for  
preference
             files.
           + Rsync instructions are send directly instead of first
             marshaled.
           + Won't try forever to get the fingerprint of a continuously
             changing file: unison will give up after certain number of
             retries.
           + Other bug fixes, including the one reported by Peter  
Selinger
             (force=older preference not working).
      * Compilation:
           + Upgraded to the new OCaml 3.04 compiler, with the LablGtk
             1.2.3 library (patched version used for compiling under
             Windows).
           + Added the option to compile unison on the Windows platform
             with Cygwin GNU C compiler. This option only supports
             building dynamically linked unison executables.

    Changes since 2.7.4:
      * Fixed a silly (but debilitating) bug in the client startup
        sequence.

    Changes since 2.7.1:
      * Added addprefsto preference, which (when set) controls which
        preference file new preferences (e.g. new ignore patterns) are
        added to.
      * Bug fix: read the initial connection header one byte at a  
time, so
        that we don't block if the header is shorter than expected.  
(This
        bug did not affect normal operation -- it just made it hard to
        tell when you were trying to use Unison incorrectly with an old
        version of the server, since it would hang instead of giving an
        error message.)

    Changes since 2.6.59:
      * Changed fastcheck from a boolean to a string preference. Its  
legal
        values are yes (for a fast check), no (for a safe check), or
        default (for a fast check--which also happens to be safe--when
        running on Unix and a safe check when on Windows). The  
default is
        default.
      * Several preferences have been renamed for consistency. All
        preference names are now spelled out in lowercase. For backward
        compatibility, the old names still work, but they are not
        mentioned in the manual any more.
      * The temp files created by the 'diff' and 'merge' commands are  
now
        named by prepending a new prefix to the file name, rather than
        appending a suffix. This should avoid confusing diff/merge
        programs that depend on the suffix to guess the type of the file
        contents.
      * We now set the keepalive option on the server socket, to make  
sure
        that the server times out if the communication link is
        unexpectedly broken.
      * Bug fixes:
           + When updating small files, Unison now closes the  
destination
             file.
           + File permissions are properly updated when the file is  
behind
             a followed link.
           + Several other small fixes.

    Changes since 2.6.38:
      * Major Windows performance improvement!
        We've added a preference fastcheck that makes Unison look  
only at
        a file's creation time and last-modified time to check  
whether it
        has changed. This should result in a huge speedup when checking
        for updates in large replicas.
        When this switch is set, Unison will use file creation times as
        'pseudo inode numbers' when scanning Windows replicas for  
updates,
        instead of reading the full contents of every file. This may  
cause
        Unison to miss propagating an update if the create time,
        modification time, and length of the file are all unchanged  
by the
        update (this is not easy to achieve, but it can be done).  
However,
        Unison will never overwrite such an update with a change from  
the
        other replica, since it always does a safe check for updates  
just
        before propagating a change. Thus, it is reasonable to use this
        switch most of the time and occasionally run Unison once with
        fastcheck set to false, if you are worried that Unison may have
        overlooked an update.
        Warning: This change is has not yet been thoroughly field- 
tested.
        If you set the fastcheck preference, pay careful attention to  
what
        Unison is doing.
      * New functionality: centralized backups and merging
           + This version incorporates two pieces of major new
             functionality, implemented by Sylvain Roy during a summer
             internship at Penn: a centralized backup facility that  
keeps
             a full backup of (selected files in) each replica, and a
             merging feature that allows Unison to invoke an external
             file-merging tool to resolve conflicting changes to
             individual files.
           + Centralized backups:
                o Unison now maintains full backups of the
                  last-synchronized versions of (some of) the files in
                  each replica; these function both as backups in the
                  usual sense and as the "common version" when invoking
                  external merge programs.
                o The backed up files are stored in a directory
                  /.unison/backup on each host. (The name of this
                  directory can be changed by setting the environment
                  variable UNISONBACKUPDIR.)
                o The predicate backup controls which files are actually
                  backed up: giving the preference 'backup = Path *'
                  causes backing up of all files.
                o Files are added to the backup directory whenever  
unison
                  updates its archive. This means that
                     # When unison reconstructs its archive from scratch
                       (e.g., because of an upgrade, or because the
                       archive files have been manually deleted), all
                       files will be backed up.
                     # Otherwise, each file will be backed up the first
                       time unison propagates an update for it.
                o The preference backupversions controls how many  
previous
                  versions of each file are kept. The default is 2  
(i.e.,
                  the last synchronized version plus one backup).
                o For backward compatibility, the backups preference is
                  also still supported, but backup is now preferred.
                o It is OK to manually delete files from the backup
                  directory (or to throw away the directory itself).
                  Before unison uses any of these files for anything
                  important, it checks that its fingerprint matches the
                  one that it expects.
           + Merging:
                o Both user interfaces offer a new 'merge' command,
                  invoked by pressing 'm' (with a changed file  
selected).
                o The actual merging is performed by an external  
program.
                  The preferences merge and merge2 control how this
                  program is invoked. If a backup exists for this file
                  (see the backup preference), then the merge preference
                  is used for this purpose; otherwise merge2 is used. In
                  both cases, the value of the preference should be a
                  string representing the command that should be  
passed to
                  a shell to invoke the merge program. Within this  
string,
                  the special substrings CURRENT1, CURRENT2, NEW, and  
OLD
                  may appear at any point. Unison will substitute  
these as
                  follows before invoking the command:
                     # CURRENT1 is replaced by the name of the local  
copy
                       of the file;
                     # CURRENT2 is replaced by the name of a temporary
                       file, into which the contents of the remote  
copy of
                       the file have been transferred by Unison prior to
                       performing the merge;
                     # NEW is replaced by the name of a temporary file
                       that Unison expects to be written by the merge
                       program when it finishes, giving the desired new
                       contents of the file; and
                     # OLD is replaced by the name of the backed up copy
                       of the original version of the file (i.e., its
                       state at the end of the last successful run of
                       Unison), if one exists (applies only to merge,  
not
                       merge2).
                  For example, on Unix systems setting the merge
                  preference to
    merge = diff3 -m CURRENT1 OLD CURRENT2 > NEW
                  will tell Unison to use the external diff3 program for
                  merging.
                  A large number of external merging programs are
                  available. For example, emacs users may find the
                  following convenient:
     merge2 = emacs -q --eval '(ediff-merge-files "CURRENT1" "CURRENT2"
                nil "NEW")'
     merge = emacs -q --eval '(ediff-merge-files-with-ancestor
                "CURRENT1" "CURRENT2" "OLD" nil "NEW")'
                  (These commands are displayed here on two lines to  
avoid
                  running off the edge of the page. In your preference
                  file, each should be written on a single line.)
                o If the external program exits without leaving any file
                  at the path NEW, Unison considers the merge to have
                  failed. If the merge program writes a file called NEW
                  but exits with a non-zero status code, then Unison
                  considers the merge to have succeeded but to have
                  generated conflicts. In this case, it attempts to  
invoke
                  an external editor so that the user can resolve the
                  conflicts. The value of the editor preference controls
                  what editor is invoked by Unison. The default is  
emacs.
                o Please send us suggestions for other useful values of
                  the merge2 and merge preferences - we'd like to give
                  several examples in the manual.
      * Smaller changes:
           + When one preference file includes another, unison no longer
             adds the suffix '.prf' to the included file by default.  
If a
             file with precisely the given name exists in the .unison
             directory, it will be used; otherwise Unison will add .prf,
             as it did before. (This change means that included  
preference
             files can be named blah.include instead of blah.prf, so  
that
             unison will not offer them in its 'choose a preference  
file'
             dialog.)
           + For Linux systems, we now offer both a statically linked  
and
             a dynamically linked executable. The static one is larger,
             but will probably run on more systems, since it doesn't
             depend on the same versions of dynamically linked library
             modules being available.
           + Fixed the force and prefer preferences, which were getting
             the propagation direction exactly backwards.
           + Fixed a bug in the startup code that would cause unison to
             crash when the default profile (~/.unison/default.prf) does
             not exist.
           + Fixed a bug where, on the run when a profile is first
             created, Unison would confusingly display the roots in
             reverse order in the user interface.
      * For developers:
           + We've added a module dependency diagram to the source
             distribution, in src/DEPENDENCIES.ps, to help new  
prospective
             developers with navigating the code.

    Changes since 2.6.11:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The startup sequence has been completely
        rewritten and greatly simplified. The main user-visible  
change is
        that the defaultpath preference has been removed. Its effect can
        be approximated by using multiple profiles, with include
        directives to incorporate common settings. All uses of  
defaultpath
        in existing profiles should be changed to path.
        Another change in startup behavior that will affect some  
users is
        that it is no longer possible to specify roots both in the  
profile
        and on the command line.
        You can achieve a similar effect, though, by breaking your  
profile
        into two:

   default.prf =
       root = blah
       root = foo
       include common

   common.prf =
       <everything else>
        Now do
   unison common root1 root2
        when you want to specify roots explicitly.
      * The -prefer and -force options have been extended to allow users
        to specify that files with more recent modtimes should be
        propagated, writing either -prefer newer or -force newer. (For
        symmetry, Unison will also accept -prefer older or -force  
older.)
        The -force older/newer options can only be used when -times is
        also set.
        The graphical user interface provides access to these facilities
        on a one-off basis via the Actions menu.
      * Names of roots can now be "aliased" to allow replicas to be
        relocated without changing the name of the archive file where
        Unison stores information between runs. (This feature is for
        experts only. See the "Archive Files" section of the manual for
        more information.)
      * Graphical user-interface:
           + A new command is provided in the Synchronization menu for
             switching to a new profile without restarting Unison from
             scratch.
           + The GUI also supports one-key shortcuts for commonly used
             profiles. If a profile contains a preference of the form  
'key
             = n', where n is a single digit, then pressing this key  
will
             cause Unison to immediately switch to this profile and  
begin
             synchronization again from scratch. (Any actions that may
             have been selected for a set of changes currently being
             displayed will be discarded.)
           + Each profile may include a preference 'label = <string>'
             giving a descriptive string that described the options
             selected in this profile. The string is listed along  
with the
             profile name in the profile selection dialog, and displayed
             in the top-right corner of the main Unison window.
      * Minor:
           + Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause the 'diff'  
display to
             order the files backwards relative to the main user
             interface. (Thanks to Pascal Brisset for this fix.)
           + On Unix systems, the graphical version of Unison will check
             the DISPLAY variable and, if it is not set, automatically
             fall back to the textual user interface.
           + Synchronization paths (path preferences) are now matched
             against the ignore preferences. So if a path is both
             specified in a path preference and ignored, it will be
             skipped.
           + Numerous other bugfixes and small improvements.

    Changes since 2.6.1:
      * The synchronization of modification times has been disabled for
        directories.
      * Preference files may now include lines of the form include  
<name>,
        which will cause name.prf to be read at that point.
      * The synchronization of permission between Windows and Unix now
        works properly.
      * A binding CYGWIN=binmode in now added to the environment so that
        the Cygwin port of OpenSSH works properly in a non-Cygwin  
context.
      * The servercmd and addversionno preferences can now be used
        together: -addversionno appends an appropriate -NNN to the  
server
        command, which is found by using the value of the -servercmd
        preference if there is one, or else just unison.
      * Both '-pref=val' and '-pref val' are now allowed for boolean
        values. (The former can be used to set a preference to false.)
      * Lot of small bugs fixed.

    Changes since 2.5.31:
      * The log preference is now set to true by default, since the log
        file seems useful for most users.
      * Several miscellaneous bugfixes (most involving symlinks).

    Changes since 2.5.25:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed (again).
      * Several significant bugs introduced in 2.5.25 have been fixed.

    Changes since 2.5.1:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * New functionality:
           + Unison now synchronizes file modtimes, user-ids, and
             group-ids.
             These new features are controlled by a set of new
             preferences, all of which are currently false by default.
                o When the times preference is set to true, file
                  modification times are propaged. (Because the
                  representations of time may not have the same
                  granularity on both replicas, Unison may not always be
                  able to make the modtimes precisely equal, but it will
                  get them as close as the operating systems involved
                  allow.)
                o When the owner preference is set to true, file  
ownership
                  information is synchronized.
                o When the group preference is set to true, group
                  information is synchronized.
                o When the numericIds preference is set to true,  
owner and
                  group information is synchronized numerically. By
                  default, owner and group numbers are converted to  
names
                  on each replica and these names are synchronized. (The
                  special user id 0 and the special group 0 are never
                  mapped via user/group names even if this preference is
                  not set.)
           + Added an integer-valued preference perms that can be  
used to
             control the propagation of permission bits. The value of  
this
             preference is a mask indicating which permission bits  
should
             be synchronized. It is set by default to 0o1777: all  
bits but
             the set-uid and set-gid bits are synchronised  
(synchronizing
             theses latter bits can be a security hazard). If you  
want to
             synchronize all bits, you can set the value of this
             preference to -1.
           + Added a log preference (default false), which makes Unison
             keep a complete record of the changes it makes to the
             replicas. By default, this record is written to a file  
called
             unison.log in the user's home directory (the value of the
             HOME environment variable). If you want it someplace else,
             set the logfile preference to the full pathname you want
             Unison to use.
           + Added an ignorenot preference that maintains a set of
             patterns for paths that should definitely not be ignored,
             whether or not they match an ignore pattern. (That is, a  
path
             will now be ignored iff it matches an ignore pattern and  
does
             not match any ignorenot patterns.)
      * User-interface improvements:
           + Roots are now displayed in the user interface in the same
             order as they were given on the command line or in the
             preferences file.
           + When the batch preference is set, the graphical user
             interface no longer waits for user confirmation when it
             displays a warning message: it simply pops up an advisory
             window with a Dismiss button at the bottom and keeps on
             going.
           + Added a new preference for controlling how many status
             messages are printed during update detection: statusdepth
             controls the maximum depth for paths on the local machine
             (longer paths are not displayed, nor are non-directory
             paths). The value should be an integer; default is 1.
           + Removed the trace and silent preferences. They did not seem
             very useful, and there were too many preferences for
             controlling output in various ways.
           + The text UI now displays just the default command (the one
             that will be used if the user just types <return>)  
instead of
             all available commands. Typing ? will print the full  
list of
             possibilities.
           + The function that finds the canonical hostname of the local
             host (which is used, for example, in calculating the  
name of
             the archive file used to remember which files have been
             synchronized) normally uses the gethostname operating  
system
             call. However, if the environment variable
             UNISONLOCALHOSTNAME is set, its value will now be used
             instead. This makes it easier to use Unison in situations
             where a machine's name changes frequently (e.g., because it
             is a laptop and gets moved around a lot).
           + File owner and group are now displayed in the "detail  
window"
             at the bottom of the screen, when unison is configured to
             synchronize them.
      * For hackers:
           + Updated to Jacques Garrigue's new version of lablgtk, which
             means we can throw away our local patched version.
             If you're compiling the GTK version of unison from sources,
             you'll need to update your copy of lablgtk to the  
developers
             release. (Warning: installing lablgtk under Windows is
             currently a bit challenging.)
           + The TODO.txt file (in the source distribution) has been
             cleaned up and reorganized. The list of pending tasks  
should
             be much easier to make sense of, for people that may  
want to
             contribute their programming energies. There is also a
             separate file BUGS.txt for open bugs.
           + The Tk user interface has been removed (it was not being
             maintained and no longer compiles).
           + The debug preference now prints quite a bit of additional
             information that should be useful for identifying  
sources of
             problems.
           + The version number of the remote server is now checked  
right
             away during the connection setup handshake, rather than
             later. (Somebody sent a bug report of a server crash that
             turned out to come from using inconsistent versions: better
             to check this earlier and in a way that can't crash either
             client or server.)
           + Unison now runs correctly on 64-bit architectures (e.g.  
Alpha
             linux). We will not be distributing binaries for these
             architectures ourselves (at least for a while) but if  
someone
             would like to make them available, we'll be glad to  
provide a
             link to them.
      * Bug fixes:
           + Pattern matching (e.g. for ignore) is now case-insensitive
             when Unison is in case-insensitive mode (i.e., when one of
             the replicas is on a windows machine).
           + Some people had trouble with mysterious failures during
             propagation of updates, where files would be falsely  
reported
             as having changed during synchronization. This should be
             fixed.
           + Numerous smaller fixes.

    Changes since 2.4.1:
      * Added a number of 'sorting modes' for the user interface. By
        default, conflicting changes are displayed at the top, and the
        rest of the entries are sorted in alphabetical order. This
        behavior can be changed in the following ways:
           + Setting the sortnewfirst preference to true causes newly
             created files to be displayed before changed files.
           + Setting sortbysize causes files to be displayed in  
increasing
             order of size.
           + Giving the preference sortfirst=<pattern> (where  
<pattern> is
             a path descriptor in the same format as 'ignore' and  
'follow'
             patterns, causes paths matching this pattern to be  
displayed
             first.
           + Similarly, giving the preference sortlast=<pattern> causes
             paths matching this pattern to be displayed last.
        The sorting preferences are described in more detail in the user
        manual. The sortnewfirst and sortbysize flags can also be  
accessed
        from the 'Sort' menu in the grpahical user interface.
      * Added two new preferences that can be used to change unison's
        fundamental behavior to make it more like a mirroring tool  
instead
        of a synchronizer.
           + Giving the preference prefer with argument <root> (by  
adding
             -prefer <root> to the command line or prefer=<root>) to  
your
             profile) means that, if there is a conflict, the  
contents of
             <root> should be propagated to the other replica (with no
             questions asked). Non-conflicting changes are treated as
             usual.
           + Giving the preference force with argument <root> will make
             unison resolve all differences in favor of the given root,
             even if it was the other replica that was changed.
        These options should be used with care! (More information is
        available in the manual.)
      * Small changes:
           + Changed default answer to 'Yes' in all two-button  
dialogs in
             the graphical interface (this seems more intuitive).
           + The rsync preference has been removed (it was used to
             activate rsync compression for file transfers, but rsync
             compression is now enabled by default).
           + In the text user interface, the arrows indicating which
             direction changes are being propagated are printed
             differently when the user has overridded Unison's default
             recommendation (====> instead of ---->). This matches the
             behavior of the graphical interface, which displays such
             arrows in a different color.
           + Carriage returns (Control-M's) are ignored at the ends of
             lines in profiles, for Windows compatibility.
           + All preferences are now fully documented in the user  
manual.

    Changes since 2.3.12:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * New/improved functionality:
           + A new preference -sortbysize controls the order in which
             changes are displayed to the user: when it is set to true,
             the smallest changed files are displayed first. (The  
default
             setting is false.)
           + A new preference -sortnewfirst causes newly created  
files to
             be listed before other updates in the user interface.
           + We now allow the ssh protocol to specify a port.
           + Incompatible change: The unison: protocol is deprecated,  
and
             we added file: and socket:. You may have to modify your
             profiles in the .unison directory. If a replica is  
specified
             without an explicit protocol, we now assume it refers to a
             file. (Previously "//saul/foo" meant to use SSH to  
connect to
             saul, then access the foo directory. Now it means to access
             saul via a remote file mechanism such as samba; the old
             effect is now achieved by writing ssh://saul/foo.)
           + Changed the startup sequence for the case where roots are
             given but no profile is given on the command line. The new
             behavior is to use the default profile (creating it if it
             does not exist), and temporarily override its roots. The
             manual claimed that this case would work by reading no
             profile at all, but AFAIK this was never true.
           + In all user interfaces, files with conflicts are always
             listed first
           + A new preference 'sshversion' can be used to control which
             version of ssh should be used to connect to the server.  
Legal
             values are 1 and 2. (Default is empty, which will make  
unison
             use whatever version of ssh is installed as the default  
'ssh'
             command.)
           + The situation when the permissions of a file was updated  
the
             same on both side is now handled correctly (we used to  
report
             a spurious conflict)
      * Improvements for the Windows version:
           + The fact that filenames are treated case-insensitively  
under
             Windows should now be handled correctly. The exact behavior
             is described in the cross-platform section of the manual.
           + It should be possible to synchronize with Windows shares,
             e.g., //host/drive/path.
           + Workarounds to the bug in syncing root directories in
             Windows. The most difficult thing to fix is an ocaml bug:
             Unix.opendir fails on c: in some versions of Windows.
      * Improvements to the GTK user interface (the Tk interface is no
        longer being maintained):
           + The UI now displays actions differently (in blue) when they
             have been explicitly changed by the user from Unison's
             default recommendation.
           + More colorful appearance.
           + The initial profile selection window works better.
           + If any transfers failed, a message to this effect is
             displayed along with 'Synchronization complete' at the  
end of
             the transfer phase (in case they may have scrolled off the
             top).
           + Added a global progress meter, displaying the percentage of
             total bytes that have been transferred so far.
      * Improvements to the text user interface:
           + The file details will be displayed automatically when a
             conflict is been detected.
           + when a warning is generated (e.g. for a temporary file left
             over from a previous run of unison) Unison will no longer
             wait for a response if it is running in -batch mode.
           + The UI now displays a short list of possible inputs each  
time
             it waits for user interaction.
           + The UI now quits immediately (rather than looping back and
             starting the interaction again) if the user presses 'q'  
when
             asked whether to propagate changes.
           + Pressing 'g' in the text user interface will proceed
             immediately with propagating updates, without asking any  
more
             questions.
      * Documentation and installation changes:
           + The manual now includes a FAQ, plus sections on common
             problems and on tricks contributed by users.
           + Both the download page and the download directory  
explicitly
             say what are the current stable and beta-test version
             numbers.
           + The OCaml sources for the up-to-the-minute developers'
             version (not guaranteed to be stable, or even to  
compile, at
             any given time!) are now available from the download page.
           + Added a subsection to the manual describing cross-platform
             issues (case conflicts, illegal filenames)
      * Many small bug fixes and random improvements.

    Changes since 2.3.1:
      * Several bug fixes. The most important is a bug in the rsync  
module
        that would occasionally cause change propagation to fail with a
        'rename' error.

    Changes since 2.2:
      * The multi-threaded transport system is now disabled by default.
        (It is not stable enough yet.)
      * Various bug fixes.
      * A new experimental feature:
        The final component of a -path argument may now be the wildcard
        specifier *. When Unison sees such a path, it expands this  
path on
        the client into into the corresponding list of paths by listing
        the contents of that directory.
        Note that if you use wildcard paths from the command line, you
        will probably need to use quotes or a backslash to prevent the *
        from being interpreted by your shell.
        If both roots are local, the contents of the first one will be
        used for expanding wildcard paths. (Nb: this is the first one
        after the canonization step - i.e., the one that is listed first
        in the user interface - not the one listed first on the command
        line or in the preferences file.)

    Changes since 2.1:
      * The transport subsystem now includes an implementation by  
Sylvain
        Gommier and Norman Ramsey of Tridgell and Mackerras's rsync
        protocol. This protocol achieves much faster transfers when  
only a
        small part of a large file has been changed by sending just  
diffs.
        This feature is mainly helpful for transfers over slow links--on
        fast local area networks it can actually degrade performance--so
        we have left it off by default. Start unison with the -rsync
        option (or put rsync=true in your preferences file) to turn  
it on.
      * "Progress bars" are now diplayed during remote file transfers,
        showing what percentage of each file has been transferred so  
far.
      * The version numbering scheme has changed. New releases will  
now be
        have numbers like 2.2.30, where the second component is
        incremented on every significant public release and the third
        component is the "patch level."
      * Miscellaneous improvements to the GTK-based user interface.
      * The manual is now available in PDF format.
      * We are experimenting with using a multi-threaded transport
        subsystem to transfer several files at the same time, making  
much
        more effective use of available network bandwidth. This  
feature is
        not completely stable yet, so by default it is disabled in the
        release version of Unison.
        If you want to play with the multi-threaded version, you'll need
        to recompile Unison from sources (as described in the
        documentation), setting the THREADS flag in Makefile.OCaml to
        true. Make sure that your OCaml compiler has been installed with
        the -with-pthreads configuration option. (You can verify this by
        checking whether the file threads/threads.cma in the OCaml
        standard library directory contains the string -lpthread near  
the
        end.)

    Changes since 1.292:
      * Reduced memory footprint (this is especially important during  
the
        first run of unison, where it has to gather information about  
all
        the files in both repositories).
      * Fixed a bug that would cause the socket server under NT to fail
        after the client exits.
      * Added a SHIFT modifier to the Ignore menu shortcut keys in GTK
        interface (to avoid hitting them accidentally).

    Changes since 1.231:
      * Tunneling over ssh is now supported in the Windows version. See
        the installation section of the manual for detailed  
instructions.
      * The transport subsystem now includes an implementation of the
        rsync protocol, built by Sylvain Gommier and Norman Ramsey. This
        protocol achieves much faster transfers when only a small  
part of
        a large file has been changed by sending just diffs. The rsync
        feature is off by default in the current version. Use the -rsync
        switch to turn it on. (Nb. We still have a lot of tuning to do:
        you may not notice much speedup yet.)
      * We're experimenting with a multi-threaded transport subsystem,
        written by Jerome Vouillon. The downloadable binaries are still
        single-threaded: if you want to try the multi-threaded version,
        you'll need to recompile from sources. (Say make THREADS=true.)
        Native thread support from the compiler is required. Use the
        option -threads N to select the maximal number of concurrent
        threads (default is 5). Multi-threaded and single-threaded
        clients/servers can interoperate.
      * A new GTK-based user interface is now available, thanks to  
Jacques
        Garrigue. The Tk user interface still works, but we'll be  
shifting
        development effort to the GTK interface from now on.
      * OCaml 3.00 is now required for compiling Unison from sources.  
The
        modules uitk and myfileselect have been changed to use labltk
        instead of camltk. To compile the Tk interface in Windows, you
        must have ocaml-3.00 and tk8.3. When installing tk8.3, put it in
        c:\Tcl rather than the suggested c:\Program Files\Tcl, and be  
sure
        to install the headers and libraries (which are not installed by
        default).
      * Added a new -addversionno switch, which causes unison to use
        unison-<currentversionnumber> instead of just unison as the  
remote
        server command. This allows multiple versions of unison to  
coexist
        conveniently on the same server: whichever version is run on the
        client, the same version will be selected on the server.

    Changes since 1.219:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * This version fixes several annoying bugs, including:
           + Some cases where propagation of file permissions was not
             working.
           + umask is now ignored when creating directories
           + directories are create writable, so that a read-only
             directory and its contents can be propagated.
           + Handling of warnings generated by the server.
           + Synchronizing a path whose parent is not a directory on  
both
             sides is now flagged as erroneous.
           + Fixed some bugs related to symnbolic links and nonexistant
             roots.
                o When a change (deletion or new contents) is propagated
                  onto a 'follow'ed symlink, the file pointed to by the
                  link is now changed. (We used to change the link  
itself,
                  which doesn't fit our assertion that 'follow' means  
the
                  link is completely invisible)
                o When one root did not exist, propagating the other  
root
                  on top of it used to fail, becuase unison could not
                  calculate the working directory into which to write
                  changes. This should be fixed.
      * A human-readable timestamp has been added to Unison's archive
        files.
      * The semantics of Path and Name regular expressions now  
correspond
        better.
      * Some minor improvements to the text UI (e.g. a command for going
        back to previous items)
      * The organization of the export directory has changed --  
should be
        easier to find / download things now.

    Changes since 1.200:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * This version has not been tested extensively on Windows.
      * Major internal changes designed to make unison safer to run  
at the
        same time as the replicas are being changed by the user.
      * Internal performance improvements.

    Changes since 1.190:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * A number of internal functions have been changed to reduce the
        amount of memory allocation, especially during the first
        synchronization. This should help power users with very big
        replicas.
      * Reimplementation of low-level remote procedure call stuff, in
        preparation for adding rsync-like smart file transfer in a later
        release.
      * Miscellaneous bug fixes.

    Changes since 1.180:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * Fixed some small bugs in the interpretation of ignore patterns.
      * Fixed some problems that were preventing the Windows version  
from
        working correctly when click-started.
      * Fixes to treatment of file permissions under Windows, which were
        causing spurious reports of different permissions when
        synchronizing between windows and unix systems.
      * Fixed one more non-tail-recursive list processing function,  
which
        was causing stack overflows when synchronizing very large
        replicas.

    Changes since 1.169:
      * The text user interface now provides commands for ignoring  
files.
      * We found and fixed some more non-tail-recursive list processing
        functions. Some power users have reported success with very  
large
        replicas.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Files ending in .tmp are no longer ignored
        automatically. If you want to ignore such files, put an
        appropriate ignore pattern in your profile.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The syntax of ignore and follow patterns  
has
        changed. Instead of putting a line of the form
                  ignore = <regexp>
        in your profile (.unison/default.prf), you should put:
                  ignore = Regexp <regexp>
        Moreover, two other styles of pattern are also recognized:
                  ignore = Name <name>
        matches any path in which one component matches <name>, while
                  ignore = Path <path>
        matches exactly the path <path>.
        Standard "globbing" conventions can be used in <name> and  
<path>:
           + a ? matches any single character except /
           + a * matches any sequence of characters not including /
           + [xyz] matches any character from the set {x, y, z }
           + {a,bb,ccc} matches any one of a, bb, or ccc.
        See the user manual for some examples.

    Changes since 1.146:
      * Some users were reporting stack overflows when synchronizing  
huge
        directories. We found and fixed some non-tail-recursive list
        processing functions, which we hope will solve the problem.  
Please
        give it a try and let us know.
      * Major additions to the documentation.

    Changes since 1.142:
      * Major internal tidying and many small bugfixes.
      * Major additions to the user manual.
      * Unison can now be started with no arguments - it will prompt
        automatically for the name of a profile file containing the  
roots
        to be synchronized. This makes it possible to start the  
graphical
        UI from a desktop icon.
      * Fixed a small bug where the text UI on NT was raising a 'no such
        signal' exception.

    Changes since 1.139:
      * The precompiled windows binary in the last release was compiled
        with an old OCaml compiler, causing propagation of  
permissions not
        to work (and perhaps leading to some other strange behaviors  
we've
        heard reports about). This has been corrected. If you're using
        precompiled binaries on Windows, please upgrade.
      * Added a -debug command line flag, which controls debugging of
        various modules. Say -debug XXX to enable debug tracing for  
module
        XXX, or -debug all to turn on absolutely everything.
      * Fixed a small bug where the text UI on NT was raising a 'no such
        signal' exception.

    Changes since 1.111:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The names and formats of the preference  
files
        in the .unison directory have changed. In particular:
           + the file "prefs" should be renamed to default.prf
           + the contents of the file "ignore" should be merged into
             default.prf. Each line of the form REGEXP in ignore should
             become a line of the form ignore = REGEXP in default.prf.
      * Unison now handles permission bits and symbolic links. See the
        manual for details.
      * You can now have different preference files in your .unison
        directory. If you start unison like this
              unison profilename
        (i.e. with just one "anonymous" command-line argument), then the
        file ~/.unison/profilename.prf will be loaded instead of
        default.prf.
      * Some improvements to terminal handling in the text user  
interface
      * Added a switch -killServer that terminates the remote server
        process when the unison client is shutting down, even when using
        sockets for communication. (By default, a remote server created
        using ssh/rsh is terminated automatically, while a socket server
        is left running.)
      * When started in 'socket server' mode, unison prints 'server
        started' on stderr when it is ready to accept connections. (This
        may be useful for scripts that want to tell when a socket-mode
        server has finished initalization.)
      * We now make a nightly mirror of our current internal development
        tree, in case anyone wants an up-to-the-minute version to hack
        around with.
      * Added a file CONTRIB with some suggestions for how to help us  
make
        Unison better.



Changes in Version 2.17.1

    Changes since 2.13.0:
      * The features for performing backups and for invoking external
        merge programs have been completely rewritten by Stephane  
Lescuyer
        (thanks, Stephane!). The user-visible functionality should not
        change, but the internals have been rationalized and there are a
        number of new features. See the manual (in particular, the
        description of the backupXXX preferences) for details.
      * Incorporated patches for ipv6 support, contributed by Samuel
        Thibault. (Note that, due to a bug in the released OCaml 3.08.3
        compiler, this code will not actually work with ipv6 unless
        compiled with the CVS version of the OCaml compiler, where  
the bug
        has been fixed; however, ipv4 should continue to work normally.)
      * OSX interface:
           + Incorporated Ben Willmore's cool new icon for the Mac UI.
      * Small fixes:
           + Fixed off by one error in month numbers (in printed dates)
             reported by Bob Burger

    Changes since 2.12.0:
      * New convention for release numbering: Releases will continue  
to be
        given numbers of the form X.Y.Z, but, from now on, just the  
major
        version number (X.Y) will be considered significant when  
checking
        compatibility between client and server versions. The third
        component of the version number will be used only to identify
        "patch levels" of releases.
        This change goes hand in hand with a change to the procedure for
        making new releases. Candidate releases will initially be given
        "beta release" status when they are announced for public
        consumption. Any bugs that are discovered will be fixed in a
        separate branch of the source repository (without changing the
        major version number) and new tarballs re-released as needed.  
When
        this process converges, the patched beta version will be dubbed
        stable.
      * Warning (failure in batch mode) when one path is completely
        emptied. This prevents Unison from deleting everything on one
        replica when the other disappear.
      * Fix diff bug (where no difference is shown the first time the  
diff
        command is given).
      * User interface changes:
           + Improved workaround for button focus problem (GTK2 UI)
           + Put leading zeroes in date fields
           + More robust handling of character encodings in GTK2 UI
           + Changed format of modification time displays, from modified
             at hh:mm:ss on dd MMM, yyyy to modified on yyyy-mm-dd
             hh:mm:ss
           + Changed time display to include seconds (so that people on
             FAT filesystems will not be confused when Unison tries to
             update a file time to an odd number of seconds and the
             filesystem truncates it to an even number!)
           + Use the diff "-u" option by default when showing  
differences
             between files (the output is more readable)
           + In text mode, pipe the diff output to a pager if the
             environment variable PAGER is set
           + Bug fixes and cleanups in ssh password prompting. Now works
             with the GTK2 UI under Linux. (Hopefully the Mac OS X  
one is
             not broken!)
           + Include profile name in the GTK2 window name
           + Added bindings ',' (same as '<') and '.' (same as '>')  
in the
             GTK2 UI
      * Mac GUI:
           + actions like < and > scroll to the next item as necessary.
           + Restart has a menu item and keyboard shortcut (command-R).
           + Added a command-line tool for Mac OS X. It can be installed
             from the Unison menu.
           + New icon.
           + Handle the "help" command-line argument properly.
           + Handle profiles given on the command line properly.
           + When a profile has been selected, the profile dialog is
             replaced by a "connecting" message while the connection is
             being made. This gives better feedback.
           + Size of left and right columns is now large enough so that
             "PropsChanged" is not cut off.
      * Minor changes:
           + Disable multi-threading when both roots are local
           + Improved error handling code. In particular, make sure all
             files are closed in case of a transient failure
           + Under Windows, use $UNISON for home directory as a last
             resort (it was wrongly moved before $HOME and  
$USERPROFILE in
             Unison 2.12.0)
           + Reopen the logfile if its name changes (profile change)
           + Double-check that permissions and modification times have
             been properly set: there are some combination of OS and
             filesystem on which setting them can fail in a silent way.
           + Check for bad Windows filenames for pure Windows
             synchronization also (not just cross architecture
             synchronization). This way, filenames containing  
backslashes,
             which are not correctly handled by unison, are rejected  
right
             away.
           + Attempt to resolve issues with synchronizing modification
             times of read-only files under Windows
           + Ignore chmod failures when deleting files
           + Ignore trailing dots in filenames in case insensitive mode
           + Proper quoting of paths, files and extensions ignored using
             the UI
           + The strings CURRENT1 and CURRENT2 are now correctly
             substitued when they occur in the diff preference
           + Improvements to syncing resource forks between Macs via a
             non-Mac system.

    Changes since 2.10.2:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * Source code availability: The Unison sources are now managed  
using
        Subversion. One nice side-effect is that anonymous checkout  
is now
        possible, like this:
         svn co https://cvs.cis.upenn.edu:3690/svnroot/unison/
        We will also continue to export a "developer tarball" of the
        current (modulo one day) sources in the web export directory. To
        receive commit logs for changes to the sources, subscribe to the
        unison-hackers list
        (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/ bcpierce/unison/lists.html).
      * Text user interface:
           + Substantial reworking of the internal logic of the text  
UI to
             make it a bit easier to modify.
           + The dumbtty flag in the text UI is automatically set to  
true
             if the client is running on a Unix system and the EMACS
             environment variable is set to anything other than the  
empty
             string.
      * Native OS X gui:
           + Added a synchronize menu item with keyboard shortcut
           + Added a merge menu item, still needs to be debugged
           + Fixes to compile for Panther
           + Miscellaneous improvements and bugfixes
      * Small changes:
           + Changed the filename checking code to apply to Windows  
only,
             instead of OS X as well.
           + Finder flags now synchronized
           + Fallback in copy.ml for filesystem that do not support  
O_EXCL
           + Changed buffer size for local file copy (was highly
             inefficient with synchronous writes)
           + Ignore chmod failure when deleting a directory
           + Fixed assertion failure when resolving a conflict content
             change / permission changes in favor of the content change.
           + Workaround for transferring large files using rsync.
           + Use buffered I/O for files (this is the only way to open
             files in binary mode under Cygwin).
           + On non-Cygwin Windows systems, the UNISON environment
             variable is now checked first to determine where to look  
for
             Unison's archive and preference files, followed by HOME and
             USERPROFILE in that order. On Unix and Cygwin systems, HOME
             is used.
           + Generalized diff preference so that it can be given  
either as
             just the command name to be used for calculating diffs or
             else a whole command line, containing the strings CURRENT1
             and CURRENT2, which will be replaced by the names of the
             files to be diff'ed before the command is called.
           + Recognize password prompts in some newer versions of ssh.

    Changes since 2.9.20:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * Major functionality changes:
           + Major tidying and enhancement of 'merge' functionality. The
             main user-visible change is that the external merge program
             may either write the merged output to a single new file, as
             before, or it may modify one or both of its input files, or
             it may write two new files. In the latter cases, its
             modifications will be copied back into place on both the
             local and the remote host, and (if the two files are now
             equal) the archive will be updated appropriately. More
             information can be found in the user manual. Thanks to Malo
             Denielou and Alan Schmitt for these improvements.
             Warning: the new merging functionality is not completely
             compatible with old versions! Check the manual for details.
           + Files larger than 2Gb are now supported.
           + Added preliminary (and still somewhat experimental) support
             for the Apple OS X operating system.
                o Resource forks should be transferred correctly.  
(See the
                  manual for details of how this works when  
synchronizing
                  HFS with non-HFS volumes.) Synchronization of file  
type
                  and creator information is also supported.
                o On OSX systems, the name of the directory for storing
                  Unison's archives, preference files, etc., is now
                  determined as follows:
                     # if ~/.unison exists, use it
                     # otherwise, use ~/Library/Application
                       Support/Unison, creating it if necessary.
                o A preliminary native-Cocoa user interface is under
                  construction. This still needs some work, and some  
users
                  experience unpredictable crashes, so it is only for
                  hackers for now. Run make with UISTYLE=mac to build  
this
                  interface.
      * Minor functionality changes:
           + Added an ignorelocks preference, which forces Unison to
             override left-over archive locks. (Setting this  
preference is
             dangerous! Use it only if you are positive you know what  
you
             are doing.)
           + Running with the -timers flag set to true will now show the
             total time taken to check for updates on each directory.
             (This can be helpful for tidying directories to improve
             update detection times.)
           + Added a new preference assumeContentsAreImmutable. If a
             directory matches one of the patterns set in this  
preference,
             then update detection is skipped for files in this  
directory.
             (The purpose is to speed update detection for cases like  
Mail
             folders, which contain lots and lots of immutable files.)
             Also a preference assumeContentsAreImmutableNot, which
             overrides the first, similarly to ignorenot. (Later
             amendment: these preferences are now called immutable and
             immutablenot.)
           + The ignorecase flag has been changed from a boolean to a
             three-valued preference. The default setting, called  
default,
             checks the operating systems running on the client and  
server
             and ignores filename case if either of them is OSX or
             Windows. Setting ignorecase to true or false overrides this
             behavior. If you have been setting ignorecase on the  
command
             line using -ignorecase=true or -ignorecase=false, you will
             need to change to -ignorecase true or -ignorecase false.
           + a new preference, 'repeat', for the text user interface
             (only). If 'repeat' is set to a number, then, after it
             finishes synchronizing, Unison will wait for that many
             seconds and then start over, continuing this way until  
it is
             killed from outside. Setting repeat to true will
             automatically set the batch preference to true.
           + Excel files are now handled specially, so that the  
fastcheck
             optimization is skipped even if the fastcheck flag is set.
             (Excel does some naughty things with modtimes, making this
             optimization unreliable and leading to failures during  
change
             propagation.)
           + The ignorecase flag has been changed from a boolean to a
             three-valued preference. The default setting, called
             'default', checks the operating systems running on the  
client
             and server and ignores filename case if either of them  
is OSX
             or Windows. Setting ignorecase to 'true' or 'false'  
overrides
             this behavior.
           + Added a new preference, 'repeat', for the text user  
interface
             (only, at the moment). If 'repeat' is set to a number,  
then,
             after it finishes synchronizing, Unison will wait for that
             many seconds and then start over, continuing this way until
             it is killed from outside. Setting repeat to true will
             automatically set the batch preference to true.
           + The 'rshargs' preference has been split into 'rshargs' and
             'sshargs' (mainly to make the documentation clearer). In
             fact, 'rshargs' is no longer mentioned in the documentation
             at all, since pretty much everybody uses ssh now anyway.
      * Documentation
           + The web pages have been completely redesigned and
             reorganized. (Thanks to Alan Schmitt for help with this.)
      * User interface improvements
           + Added a GTK2 user interface, capable (among other  
things) of
             displaying filenames in any locale encoding. Kudos to  
Stephen
             Tse for contributing this code!
           + The text UI now prints a list of failed and skipped  
transfers
             at the end of synchronization.
           + Restarting update detection from the graphical UI will  
reload
             the current profile (which in particular will reset the - 
path
             preference, in case it has been narrowed by using the
             "Recheck unsynchronized items" command).
           + Several small improvements to the text user interface,
             including a progress display.
      * Bug fixes (too numerous to count, actually, but here are some):
           + The maxthreads preference works now.
           + Fixed bug where warning message about uname returning an
             unrecognized result was preventing connection to server.  
(The
             warning is no longer printed, and all systems where 'uname'
             returns anything other than 'Darwin' are assumed not to be
             running OS X.)
           + Fixed a problem on OS X that caused some valid file names
             (e.g., those including colons) to be considered invalid.
           + Patched Path.followLink to follow links under cygwin in
             addition to Unix (suggested by Matt Swift).
           + Small change to the storeRootsName function, suggested by
             bliviero at ichips.intel.com, to fix a problem in unison  
with
             the `rootalias' option, which allows you to tell unison  
that
             two roots contain the same files. Rootalias was being  
applied
             after the hosts were sorted, so it wouldn't work  
properly in
             all cases.
           + Incorporated a fix by Dmitry Bely for setting utimes of
             read-only files on Win32 systems.
      * Installation / portability:
           + Unison now compiles with OCaml version 3.07 and later  
out of
             the box.
           + Makefile.OCaml fixed to compile out of the box under  
OpenBSD.
           + a few additional ports (e.g. OpenBSD, Zaurus/IPAQ) are now
             mentioned in the documentation
           + Unison can now be installed easily on OSX systems using the
             Fink package manager

    Changes since 2.9.1:
      * Added a preference maxthreads that can be used to limit the  
number
        of simultaneous file transfers.
      * Added a backupdir preference, which controls where backup files
        are stored.
      * Basic support added for OSX. In particular, Unison now  
recognizes
        when one of the hosts being synchronized is running OSX and
        switches to a case-insensitive treatment of filenames (i.e.,  
'foo'
        and 'FOO' are considered to be the same file). (OSX is not yet
        fully working, however: in particular, files with resource forks
        will not be synchronized correctly.)
      * The same hash used to form the archive name is now also added to
        the names of the temp files created during file transfer. The
        reason for this is that, during update detection, we are  
going to
        silently delete any old temp files that we find along the  
way, and
        we want to prevent ourselves from deleting temp files  
belonging to
        other instances of Unison that may be running in parallel, e.g.
        synchronizing with a different host. Thanks to Ruslan Ermilov  
for
        this suggestion.
      * Several small user interface improvements
      * Documentation
           + FAQ and bug reporting instructions have been split out as
             separate HTML pages, accessible directly from the unison  
web
             page.
           + Additions to FAQ, in particular suggestions about  
performance
             tuning.
      * Makefile
           + Makefile.OCaml now sets UISTYLE=text or UISTYLE=gtk
             automatically, depending on whether it finds lablgtk
             installed
           + Unison should now compile "out of the box" under OSX

    Changes since 2.8.1:
      * Changing profile works again under Windows
      * File movement optimization: Unison now tries to use local copy
        instead of transfer for moved or copied files. It is  
controled by
        a boolean option "xferbycopying".
      * Network statistics window (transfer rate, amount of data
        transferred). [NB: not available in Windows-Cygwin version.]
      * symlinks work under the cygwin version (which is dynamically
        linked).
      * Fixed potential deadlock when synchronizing between Windows and
        Unix
      * Small improvements:
           + If neither the
             tt USERPROFILE nor the
             tt HOME environment variables are set, then Unison will put
             its temporary commit log (called
             tt DANGER.README) into the directory named by the
             tt UNISON environment variable, if any; otherwise it  
will use
             tt C:.
           + alternative set of values for fastcheck: yes = true; no =
             false; default = auto.
           + -silent implies -contactquietly
      * Source code:
           + Code reorganization and tidying. (Started breaking up  
some of
             the basic utility modules so that the non-unison-specific
             stuff can be made available for other projects.)
           + several Makefile and docs changes (for release);
           + further comments in "update.ml";
           + connection information is not stored in global variables
             anymore.

    Changes since 2.7.78:
      * Small bugfix to textual user interface under Unix (to avoid
        leaving the terminal in a bad state where it would not echo  
inputs
        after Unison exited).

    Changes since 2.7.39:
      * Improvements to the main web page (stable and beta version docs
        are now both accessible).
      * User manual revised.
      * Added some new preferences:
           + "sshcmd" and "rshcmd" for specifying paths to ssh and rsh
             programs.
           + "contactquietly" for suppressing the "contacting server"
             message during Unison startup (under the graphical UI).
      * Bug fixes:
           + Fixed small bug in UI that neglected to change the  
displayed
             column headers if loading a new profile caused the roots to
             change.
           + Fixed a bug that would put the text UI into an infinite  
loop
             if it encountered a conflict when run in batch mode.
           + Added some code to try to fix the display of non-Ascii
             characters in filenames on Windows systems in the GTK UI.
             (This code is currently untested--if you're one of the  
people
             that had reported problems with display of non-ascii
             filenames, we'd appreciate knowing if this actually fixes
             things.)
           + `-prefer/-force newer' works properly now. (The bug was
             reported by Sebastian Urbaniak and Sean Fulton.)
      * User interface and Unison behavior:
           + Renamed `Proceed' to `Go' in the graphical UI.
           + Added exit status for the textual user interface.
           + Paths that are not synchronized because of conflicts or
             errors during update detection are now noted in the log  
file.
           + [END] messages in log now use a briefer format
           + Changed the text UI startup sequence so that
             tt ./unison -ui text will use the default profile  
instead of
             failing.
           + Made some improvements to the error messages.
           + Added some debugging messages to remote.ml.

    Changes since 2.7.7:
      * Incorporated, once again, a multi-threaded transport sub-system.
        It transfers several files at the same time, thereby making much
        more effective use of available network bandwidth. Unlike the
        earlier attempt, this time we do not rely on the native thread
        library of OCaml. Instead, we implement a light-weight,
        non-preemptive multi-thread library in OCaml directly. This
        version appears stable.
        Some adjustments to unison are made to accommodate the
        multi-threaded version. These include, in particular, changes to
        the user interface and logging, for example:
           + Two log entries for each transferring task, one for the
             beginning, one for the end.
           + Suppressed warning messages against removing temp files  
left
             by a previous unison run, because warning does not work
             nicely under multi-threading. The temp file names are made
             less likely to coincide with the name of a file created by
             the user. They take the form
             .#<filename>.<serial>.unison.tmp.
      * Added a new command to the GTK user interface: pressing 'f'  
causes
        Unison to start a new update detection phase, using as paths  
just
        those paths that have been detected as changed and not yet  
marked
        as successfully completed. Use this command to quickly restart
        Unison on just the set of paths still needing attention after a
        previous run.
      * Made the ignorecase preference user-visible, and changed the
        initialization code so that it can be manually set to true, even
        if neither host is running Windows. (This may be useful, e.g.,
        when using Unison running on a Unix system with a FAT volume
        mounted.)
      * Small improvements and bug fixes:
           + Errors in preference files now generate fatal errors rather
             than warnings at startup time. (I.e., you can't go on from
             them.) Also, we fixed a bug that was preventing these
             warnings from appearing in the text UI, so some users who
             have been running (unsuspectingly) with garbage in their
             prefs files may now get error reports.
           + Error reporting for preference files now provides file name
             and line number.
           + More intelligible message in the case of identical  
change to
             the same files: "Nothing to do: replicas have been changed
             only in identical ways since last sync."
           + Files with prefix '.#' excluded when scanning for  
preference
             files.
           + Rsync instructions are send directly instead of first
             marshaled.
           + Won't try forever to get the fingerprint of a continuously
             changing file: unison will give up after certain number of
             retries.
           + Other bug fixes, including the one reported by Peter  
Selinger
             (force=older preference not working).
      * Compilation:
           + Upgraded to the new OCaml 3.04 compiler, with the LablGtk
             1.2.3 library (patched version used for compiling under
             Windows).
           + Added the option to compile unison on the Windows platform
             with Cygwin GNU C compiler. This option only supports
             building dynamically linked unison executables.

    Changes since 2.7.4:
      * Fixed a silly (but debilitating) bug in the client startup
        sequence.

    Changes since 2.7.1:
      * Added addprefsto preference, which (when set) controls which
        preference file new preferences (e.g. new ignore patterns) are
        added to.
      * Bug fix: read the initial connection header one byte at a  
time, so
        that we don't block if the header is shorter than expected.  
(This
        bug did not affect normal operation -- it just made it hard to
        tell when you were trying to use Unison incorrectly with an old
        version of the server, since it would hang instead of giving an
        error message.)

    Changes since 2.6.59:
      * Changed fastcheck from a boolean to a string preference. Its  
legal
        values are yes (for a fast check), no (for a safe check), or
        default (for a fast check--which also happens to be safe--when
        running on Unix and a safe check when on Windows). The  
default is
        default.
      * Several preferences have been renamed for consistency. All
        preference names are now spelled out in lowercase. For backward
        compatibility, the old names still work, but they are not
        mentioned in the manual any more.
      * The temp files created by the 'diff' and 'merge' commands are  
now
        named by prepending a new prefix to the file name, rather than
        appending a suffix. This should avoid confusing diff/merge
        programs that depend on the suffix to guess the type of the file
        contents.
      * We now set the keepalive option on the server socket, to make  
sure
        that the server times out if the communication link is
        unexpectedly broken.
      * Bug fixes:
           + When updating small files, Unison now closes the  
destination
             file.
           + File permissions are properly updated when the file is  
behind
             a followed link.
           + Several other small fixes.

    Changes since 2.6.38:
      * Major Windows performance improvement!
        We've added a preference fastcheck that makes Unison look  
only at
        a file's creation time and last-modified time to check  
whether it
        has changed. This should result in a huge speedup when checking
        for updates in large replicas.
        When this switch is set, Unison will use file creation times as
        'pseudo inode numbers' when scanning Windows replicas for  
updates,
        instead of reading the full contents of every file. This may  
cause
        Unison to miss propagating an update if the create time,
        modification time, and length of the file are all unchanged  
by the
        update (this is not easy to achieve, but it can be done).  
However,
        Unison will never overwrite such an update with a change from  
the
        other replica, since it always does a safe check for updates  
just
        before propagating a change. Thus, it is reasonable to use this
        switch most of the time and occasionally run Unison once with
        fastcheck set to false, if you are worried that Unison may have
        overlooked an update.
        Warning: This change is has not yet been thoroughly field- 
tested.
        If you set the fastcheck preference, pay careful attention to  
what
        Unison is doing.
      * New functionality: centralized backups and merging
           + This version incorporates two pieces of major new
             functionality, implemented by Sylvain Roy during a summer
             internship at Penn: a centralized backup facility that  
keeps
             a full backup of (selected files in) each replica, and a
             merging feature that allows Unison to invoke an external
             file-merging tool to resolve conflicting changes to
             individual files.
           + Centralized backups:
                o Unison now maintains full backups of the
                  last-synchronized versions of (some of) the files in
                  each replica; these function both as backups in the
                  usual sense and as the "common version" when invoking
                  external merge programs.
                o The backed up files are stored in a directory
                  /.unison/backup on each host. (The name of this
                  directory can be changed by setting the environment
                  variable UNISONBACKUPDIR.)
                o The predicate backup controls which files are actually
                  backed up: giving the preference 'backup = Path *'
                  causes backing up of all files.
                o Files are added to the backup directory whenever  
unison
                  updates its archive. This means that
                     # When unison reconstructs its archive from scratch
                       (e.g., because of an upgrade, or because the
                       archive files have been manually deleted), all
                       files will be backed up.
                     # Otherwise, each file will be backed up the first
                       time unison propagates an update for it.
                o The preference backupversions controls how many  
previous
                  versions of each file are kept. The default is 2  
(i.e.,
                  the last synchronized version plus one backup).
                o For backward compatibility, the backups preference is
                  also still supported, but backup is now preferred.
                o It is OK to manually delete files from the backup
                  directory (or to throw away the directory itself).
                  Before unison uses any of these files for anything
                  important, it checks that its fingerprint matches the
                  one that it expects.
           + Merging:
                o Both user interfaces offer a new 'merge' command,
                  invoked by pressing 'm' (with a changed file  
selected).
                o The actual merging is performed by an external  
program.
                  The preferences merge and merge2 control how this
                  program is invoked. If a backup exists for this file
                  (see the backup preference), then the merge preference
                  is used for this purpose; otherwise merge2 is used. In
                  both cases, the value of the preference should be a
                  string representing the command that should be  
passed to
                  a shell to invoke the merge program. Within this  
string,
                  the special substrings CURRENT1, CURRENT2, NEW, and  
OLD
                  may appear at any point. Unison will substitute  
these as
                  follows before invoking the command:
                     # CURRENT1 is replaced by the name of the local  
copy
                       of the file;
                     # CURRENT2 is replaced by the name of a temporary
                       file, into which the contents of the remote  
copy of
                       the file have been transferred by Unison prior to
                       performing the merge;
                     # NEW is replaced by the name of a temporary file
                       that Unison expects to be written by the merge
                       program when it finishes, giving the desired new
                       contents of the file; and
                     # OLD is replaced by the name of the backed up copy
                       of the original version of the file (i.e., its
                       state at the end of the last successful run of
                       Unison), if one exists (applies only to merge,  
not
                       merge2).
                  For example, on Unix systems setting the merge
                  preference to
    merge = diff3 -m CURRENT1 OLD CURRENT2 > NEW
                  will tell Unison to use the external diff3 program for
                  merging.
                  A large number of external merging programs are
                  available. For example, emacs users may find the
                  following convenient:
     merge2 = emacs -q --eval '(ediff-merge-files "CURRENT1" "CURRENT2"
                nil "NEW")'
     merge = emacs -q --eval '(ediff-merge-files-with-ancestor
                "CURRENT1" "CURRENT2" "OLD" nil "NEW")'
                  (These commands are displayed here on two lines to  
avoid
                  running off the edge of the page. In your preference
                  file, each should be written on a single line.)
                o If the external program exits without leaving any file
                  at the path NEW, Unison considers the merge to have
                  failed. If the merge program writes a file called NEW
                  but exits with a non-zero status code, then Unison
                  considers the merge to have succeeded but to have
                  generated conflicts. In this case, it attempts to  
invoke
                  an external editor so that the user can resolve the
                  conflicts. The value of the editor preference controls
                  what editor is invoked by Unison. The default is  
emacs.
                o Please send us suggestions for other useful values of
                  the merge2 and merge preferences - we'd like to give
                  several examples in the manual.
      * Smaller changes:
           + When one preference file includes another, unison no longer
             adds the suffix '.prf' to the included file by default.  
If a
             file with precisely the given name exists in the .unison
             directory, it will be used; otherwise Unison will add .prf,
             as it did before. (This change means that included  
preference
             files can be named blah.include instead of blah.prf, so  
that
             unison will not offer them in its 'choose a preference  
file'
             dialog.)
           + For Linux systems, we now offer both a statically linked  
and
             a dynamically linked executable. The static one is larger,
             but will probably run on more systems, since it doesn't
             depend on the same versions of dynamically linked library
             modules being available.
           + Fixed the force and prefer preferences, which were getting
             the propagation direction exactly backwards.
           + Fixed a bug in the startup code that would cause unison to
             crash when the default profile (~/.unison/default.prf) does
             not exist.
           + Fixed a bug where, on the run when a profile is first
             created, Unison would confusingly display the roots in
             reverse order in the user interface.
      * For developers:
           + We've added a module dependency diagram to the source
             distribution, in src/DEPENDENCIES.ps, to help new  
prospective
             developers with navigating the code.

    Changes since 2.6.11:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The startup sequence has been completely
        rewritten and greatly simplified. The main user-visible  
change is
        that the defaultpath preference has been removed. Its effect can
        be approximated by using multiple profiles, with include
        directives to incorporate common settings. All uses of  
defaultpath
        in existing profiles should be changed to path.
        Another change in startup behavior that will affect some  
users is
        that it is no longer possible to specify roots both in the  
profile
        and on the command line.
        You can achieve a similar effect, though, by breaking your  
profile
        into two:

   default.prf =
       root = blah
       root = foo
       include common

   common.prf =
       <everything else>
        Now do
   unison common root1 root2
        when you want to specify roots explicitly.
      * The -prefer and -force options have been extended to allow users
        to specify that files with more recent modtimes should be
        propagated, writing either -prefer newer or -force newer. (For
        symmetry, Unison will also accept -prefer older or -force  
older.)
        The -force older/newer options can only be used when -times is
        also set.
        The graphical user interface provides access to these facilities
        on a one-off basis via the Actions menu.
      * Names of roots can now be "aliased" to allow replicas to be
        relocated without changing the name of the archive file where
        Unison stores information between runs. (This feature is for
        experts only. See the "Archive Files" section of the manual for
        more information.)
      * Graphical user-interface:
           + A new command is provided in the Synchronization menu for
             switching to a new profile without restarting Unison from
             scratch.
           + The GUI also supports one-key shortcuts for commonly used
             profiles. If a profile contains a preference of the form  
'key
             = n', where n is a single digit, then pressing this key  
will
             cause Unison to immediately switch to this profile and  
begin
             synchronization again from scratch. (Any actions that may
             have been selected for a set of changes currently being
             displayed will be discarded.)
           + Each profile may include a preference 'label = <string>'
             giving a descriptive string that described the options
             selected in this profile. The string is listed along  
with the
             profile name in the profile selection dialog, and displayed
             in the top-right corner of the main Unison window.
      * Minor:
           + Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause the 'diff'  
display to
             order the files backwards relative to the main user
             interface. (Thanks to Pascal Brisset for this fix.)
           + On Unix systems, the graphical version of Unison will check
             the DISPLAY variable and, if it is not set, automatically
             fall back to the textual user interface.
           + Synchronization paths (path preferences) are now matched
             against the ignore preferences. So if a path is both
             specified in a path preference and ignored, it will be
             skipped.
           + Numerous other bugfixes and small improvements.

    Changes since 2.6.1:
      * The synchronization of modification times has been disabled for
        directories.
      * Preference files may now include lines of the form include  
<name>,
        which will cause name.prf to be read at that point.
      * The synchronization of permission between Windows and Unix now
        works properly.
      * A binding CYGWIN=binmode in now added to the environment so that
        the Cygwin port of OpenSSH works properly in a non-Cygwin  
context.
      * The servercmd and addversionno preferences can now be used
        together: -addversionno appends an appropriate -NNN to the  
server
        command, which is found by using the value of the -servercmd
        preference if there is one, or else just unison.
      * Both '-pref=val' and '-pref val' are now allowed for boolean
        values. (The former can be used to set a preference to false.)
      * Lot of small bugs fixed.

    Changes since 2.5.31:
      * The log preference is now set to true by default, since the log
        file seems useful for most users.
      * Several miscellaneous bugfixes (most involving symlinks).

    Changes since 2.5.25:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed (again).
      * Several significant bugs introduced in 2.5.25 have been fixed.

    Changes since 2.5.1:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * New functionality:
           + Unison now synchronizes file modtimes, user-ids, and
             group-ids.
             These new features are controlled by a set of new
             preferences, all of which are currently false by default.
                o When the times preference is set to true, file
                  modification times are propaged. (Because the
                  representations of time may not have the same
                  granularity on both replicas, Unison may not always be
                  able to make the modtimes precisely equal, but it will
                  get them as close as the operating systems involved
                  allow.)
                o When the owner preference is set to true, file  
ownership
                  information is synchronized.
                o When the group preference is set to true, group
                  information is synchronized.
                o When the numericIds preference is set to true,  
owner and
                  group information is synchronized numerically. By
                  default, owner and group numbers are converted to  
names
                  on each replica and these names are synchronized. (The
                  special user id 0 and the special group 0 are never
                  mapped via user/group names even if this preference is
                  not set.)
           + Added an integer-valued preference perms that can be  
used to
             control the propagation of permission bits. The value of  
this
             preference is a mask indicating which permission bits  
should
             be synchronized. It is set by default to 0o1777: all  
bits but
             the set-uid and set-gid bits are synchronised  
(synchronizing
             theses latter bits can be a security hazard). If you  
want to
             synchronize all bits, you can set the value of this
             preference to -1.
           + Added a log preference (default false), which makes Unison
             keep a complete record of the changes it makes to the
             replicas. By default, this record is written to a file  
called
             unison.log in the user's home directory (the value of the
             HOME environment variable). If you want it someplace else,
             set the logfile preference to the full pathname you want
             Unison to use.
           + Added an ignorenot preference that maintains a set of
             patterns for paths that should definitely not be ignored,
             whether or not they match an ignore pattern. (That is, a  
path
             will now be ignored iff it matches an ignore pattern and  
does
             not match any ignorenot patterns.)
      * User-interface improvements:
           + Roots are now displayed in the user interface in the same
             order as they were given on the command line or in the
             preferences file.
           + When the batch preference is set, the graphical user
             interface no longer waits for user confirmation when it
             displays a warning message: it simply pops up an advisory
             window with a Dismiss button at the bottom and keeps on
             going.
           + Added a new preference for controlling how many status
             messages are printed during update detection: statusdepth
             controls the maximum depth for paths on the local machine
             (longer paths are not displayed, nor are non-directory
             paths). The value should be an integer; default is 1.
           + Removed the trace and silent preferences. They did not seem
             very useful, and there were too many preferences for
             controlling output in various ways.
           + The text UI now displays just the default command (the one
             that will be used if the user just types <return>)  
instead of
             all available commands. Typing ? will print the full  
list of
             possibilities.
           + The function that finds the canonical hostname of the local
             host (which is used, for example, in calculating the  
name of
             the archive file used to remember which files have been
             synchronized) normally uses the gethostname operating  
system
             call. However, if the environment variable
             UNISONLOCALHOSTNAME is set, its value will now be used
             instead. This makes it easier to use Unison in situations
             where a machine's name changes frequently (e.g., because it
             is a laptop and gets moved around a lot).
           + File owner and group are now displayed in the "detail  
window"
             at the bottom of the screen, when unison is configured to
             synchronize them.
      * For hackers:
           + Updated to Jacques Garrigue's new version of lablgtk, which
             means we can throw away our local patched version.
             If you're compiling the GTK version of unison from sources,
             you'll need to update your copy of lablgtk to the  
developers
             release. (Warning: installing lablgtk under Windows is
             currently a bit challenging.)
           + The TODO.txt file (in the source distribution) has been
             cleaned up and reorganized. The list of pending tasks  
should
             be much easier to make sense of, for people that may  
want to
             contribute their programming energies. There is also a
             separate file BUGS.txt for open bugs.
           + The Tk user interface has been removed (it was not being
             maintained and no longer compiles).
           + The debug preference now prints quite a bit of additional
             information that should be useful for identifying  
sources of
             problems.
           + The version number of the remote server is now checked  
right
             away during the connection setup handshake, rather than
             later. (Somebody sent a bug report of a server crash that
             turned out to come from using inconsistent versions: better
             to check this earlier and in a way that can't crash either
             client or server.)
           + Unison now runs correctly on 64-bit architectures (e.g.  
Alpha
             linux). We will not be distributing binaries for these
             architectures ourselves (at least for a while) but if  
someone
             would like to make them available, we'll be glad to  
provide a
             link to them.
      * Bug fixes:
           + Pattern matching (e.g. for ignore) is now case-insensitive
             when Unison is in case-insensitive mode (i.e., when one of
             the replicas is on a windows machine).
           + Some people had trouble with mysterious failures during
             propagation of updates, where files would be falsely  
reported
             as having changed during synchronization. This should be
             fixed.
           + Numerous smaller fixes.

    Changes since 2.4.1:
      * Added a number of 'sorting modes' for the user interface. By
        default, conflicting changes are displayed at the top, and the
        rest of the entries are sorted in alphabetical order. This
        behavior can be changed in the following ways:
           + Setting the sortnewfirst preference to true causes newly
             created files to be displayed before changed files.
           + Setting sortbysize causes files to be displayed in  
increasing
             order of size.
           + Giving the preference sortfirst=<pattern> (where  
<pattern> is
             a path descriptor in the same format as 'ignore' and  
'follow'
             patterns, causes paths matching this pattern to be  
displayed
             first.
           + Similarly, giving the preference sortlast=<pattern> causes
             paths matching this pattern to be displayed last.
        The sorting preferences are described in more detail in the user
        manual. The sortnewfirst and sortbysize flags can also be  
accessed
        from the 'Sort' menu in the grpahical user interface.
      * Added two new preferences that can be used to change unison's
        fundamental behavior to make it more like a mirroring tool  
instead
        of a synchronizer.
           + Giving the preference prefer with argument <root> (by  
adding
             -prefer <root> to the command line or prefer=<root>) to  
your
             profile) means that, if there is a conflict, the  
contents of
             <root> should be propagated to the other replica (with no
             questions asked). Non-conflicting changes are treated as
             usual.
           + Giving the preference force with argument <root> will make
             unison resolve all differences in favor of the given root,
             even if it was the other replica that was changed.
        These options should be used with care! (More information is
        available in the manual.)
      * Small changes:
           + Changed default answer to 'Yes' in all two-button  
dialogs in
             the graphical interface (this seems more intuitive).
           + The rsync preference has been removed (it was used to
             activate rsync compression for file transfers, but rsync
             compression is now enabled by default).
           + In the text user interface, the arrows indicating which
             direction changes are being propagated are printed
             differently when the user has overridded Unison's default
             recommendation (====> instead of ---->). This matches the
             behavior of the graphical interface, which displays such
             arrows in a different color.
           + Carriage returns (Control-M's) are ignored at the ends of
             lines in profiles, for Windows compatibility.
           + All preferences are now fully documented in the user  
manual.

    Changes since 2.3.12:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * New/improved functionality:
           + A new preference -sortbysize controls the order in which
             changes are displayed to the user: when it is set to true,
             the smallest changed files are displayed first. (The  
default
             setting is false.)
           + A new preference -sortnewfirst causes newly created  
files to
             be listed before other updates in the user interface.
           + We now allow the ssh protocol to specify a port.
           + Incompatible change: The unison: protocol is deprecated,  
and
             we added file: and socket:. You may have to modify your
             profiles in the .unison directory. If a replica is  
specified
             without an explicit protocol, we now assume it refers to a
             file. (Previously "//saul/foo" meant to use SSH to  
connect to
             saul, then access the foo directory. Now it means to access
             saul via a remote file mechanism such as samba; the old
             effect is now achieved by writing ssh://saul/foo.)
           + Changed the startup sequence for the case where roots are
             given but no profile is given on the command line. The new
             behavior is to use the default profile (creating it if it
             does not exist), and temporarily override its roots. The
             manual claimed that this case would work by reading no
             profile at all, but AFAIK this was never true.
           + In all user interfaces, files with conflicts are always
             listed first
           + A new preference 'sshversion' can be used to control which
             version of ssh should be used to connect to the server.  
Legal
             values are 1 and 2. (Default is empty, which will make  
unison
             use whatever version of ssh is installed as the default  
'ssh'
             command.)
           + The situation when the permissions of a file was updated  
the
             same on both side is now handled correctly (we used to  
report
             a spurious conflict)
      * Improvements for the Windows version:
           + The fact that filenames are treated case-insensitively  
under
             Windows should now be handled correctly. The exact behavior
             is described in the cross-platform section of the manual.
           + It should be possible to synchronize with Windows shares,
             e.g., //host/drive/path.
           + Workarounds to the bug in syncing root directories in
             Windows. The most difficult thing to fix is an ocaml bug:
             Unix.opendir fails on c: in some versions of Windows.
      * Improvements to the GTK user interface (the Tk interface is no
        longer being maintained):
           + The UI now displays actions differently (in blue) when they
             have been explicitly changed by the user from Unison's
             default recommendation.
           + More colorful appearance.
           + The initial profile selection window works better.
           + If any transfers failed, a message to this effect is
             displayed along with 'Synchronization complete' at the  
end of
             the transfer phase (in case they may have scrolled off the
             top).
           + Added a global progress meter, displaying the percentage of
             total bytes that have been transferred so far.
      * Improvements to the text user interface:
           + The file details will be displayed automatically when a
             conflict is been detected.
           + when a warning is generated (e.g. for a temporary file left
             over from a previous run of unison) Unison will no longer
             wait for a response if it is running in -batch mode.
           + The UI now displays a short list of possible inputs each  
time
             it waits for user interaction.
           + The UI now quits immediately (rather than looping back and
             starting the interaction again) if the user presses 'q'  
when
             asked whether to propagate changes.
           + Pressing 'g' in the text user interface will proceed
             immediately with propagating updates, without asking any  
more
             questions.
      * Documentation and installation changes:
           + The manual now includes a FAQ, plus sections on common
             problems and on tricks contributed by users.
           + Both the download page and the download directory  
explicitly
             say what are the current stable and beta-test version
             numbers.
           + The OCaml sources for the up-to-the-minute developers'
             version (not guaranteed to be stable, or even to  
compile, at
             any given time!) are now available from the download page.
           + Added a subsection to the manual describing cross-platform
             issues (case conflicts, illegal filenames)
      * Many small bug fixes and random improvements.

    Changes since 2.3.1:
      * Several bug fixes. The most important is a bug in the rsync  
module
        that would occasionally cause change propagation to fail with a
        'rename' error.

    Changes since 2.2:
      * The multi-threaded transport system is now disabled by default.
        (It is not stable enough yet.)
      * Various bug fixes.
      * A new experimental feature:
        The final component of a -path argument may now be the wildcard
        specifier *. When Unison sees such a path, it expands this  
path on
        the client into into the corresponding list of paths by listing
        the contents of that directory.
        Note that if you use wildcard paths from the command line, you
        will probably need to use quotes or a backslash to prevent the *
        from being interpreted by your shell.
        If both roots are local, the contents of the first one will be
        used for expanding wildcard paths. (Nb: this is the first one
        after the canonization step - i.e., the one that is listed first
        in the user interface - not the one listed first on the command
        line or in the preferences file.)

    Changes since 2.1:
      * The transport subsystem now includes an implementation by  
Sylvain
        Gommier and Norman Ramsey of Tridgell and Mackerras's rsync
        protocol. This protocol achieves much faster transfers when  
only a
        small part of a large file has been changed by sending just  
diffs.
        This feature is mainly helpful for transfers over slow links--on
        fast local area networks it can actually degrade performance--so
        we have left it off by default. Start unison with the -rsync
        option (or put rsync=true in your preferences file) to turn  
it on.
      * "Progress bars" are now diplayed during remote file transfers,
        showing what percentage of each file has been transferred so  
far.
      * The version numbering scheme has changed. New releases will  
now be
        have numbers like 2.2.30, where the second component is
        incremented on every significant public release and the third
        component is the "patch level."
      * Miscellaneous improvements to the GTK-based user interface.
      * The manual is now available in PDF format.
      * We are experimenting with using a multi-threaded transport
        subsystem to transfer several files at the same time, making  
much
        more effective use of available network bandwidth. This  
feature is
        not completely stable yet, so by default it is disabled in the
        release version of Unison.
        If you want to play with the multi-threaded version, you'll need
        to recompile Unison from sources (as described in the
        documentation), setting the THREADS flag in Makefile.OCaml to
        true. Make sure that your OCaml compiler has been installed with
        the -with-pthreads configuration option. (You can verify this by
        checking whether the file threads/threads.cma in the OCaml
        standard library directory contains the string -lpthread near  
the
        end.)

    Changes since 1.292:
      * Reduced memory footprint (this is especially important during  
the
        first run of unison, where it has to gather information about  
all
        the files in both repositories).
      * Fixed a bug that would cause the socket server under NT to fail
        after the client exits.
      * Added a SHIFT modifier to the Ignore menu shortcut keys in GTK
        interface (to avoid hitting them accidentally).

    Changes since 1.231:
      * Tunneling over ssh is now supported in the Windows version. See
        the installation section of the manual for detailed  
instructions.
      * The transport subsystem now includes an implementation of the
        rsync protocol, built by Sylvain Gommier and Norman Ramsey. This
        protocol achieves much faster transfers when only a small  
part of
        a large file has been changed by sending just diffs. The rsync
        feature is off by default in the current version. Use the -rsync
        switch to turn it on. (Nb. We still have a lot of tuning to do:
        you may not notice much speedup yet.)
      * We're experimenting with a multi-threaded transport subsystem,
        written by Jerome Vouillon. The downloadable binaries are still
        single-threaded: if you want to try the multi-threaded version,
        you'll need to recompile from sources. (Say make THREADS=true.)
        Native thread support from the compiler is required. Use the
        option -threads N to select the maximal number of concurrent
        threads (default is 5). Multi-threaded and single-threaded
        clients/servers can interoperate.
      * A new GTK-based user interface is now available, thanks to  
Jacques
        Garrigue. The Tk user interface still works, but we'll be  
shifting
        development effort to the GTK interface from now on.
      * OCaml 3.00 is now required for compiling Unison from sources.  
The
        modules uitk and myfileselect have been changed to use labltk
        instead of camltk. To compile the Tk interface in Windows, you
        must have ocaml-3.00 and tk8.3. When installing tk8.3, put it in
        c:\Tcl rather than the suggested c:\Program Files\Tcl, and be  
sure
        to install the headers and libraries (which are not installed by
        default).
      * Added a new -addversionno switch, which causes unison to use
        unison-<currentversionnumber> instead of just unison as the  
remote
        server command. This allows multiple versions of unison to  
coexist
        conveniently on the same server: whichever version is run on the
        client, the same version will be selected on the server.

    Changes since 1.219:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * This version fixes several annoying bugs, including:
           + Some cases where propagation of file permissions was not
             working.
           + umask is now ignored when creating directories
           + directories are create writable, so that a read-only
             directory and its contents can be propagated.
           + Handling of warnings generated by the server.
           + Synchronizing a path whose parent is not a directory on  
both
             sides is now flagged as erroneous.
           + Fixed some bugs related to symnbolic links and nonexistant
             roots.
                o When a change (deletion or new contents) is propagated
                  onto a 'follow'ed symlink, the file pointed to by the
                  link is now changed. (We used to change the link  
itself,
                  which doesn't fit our assertion that 'follow' means  
the
                  link is completely invisible)
                o When one root did not exist, propagating the other  
root
                  on top of it used to fail, becuase unison could not
                  calculate the working directory into which to write
                  changes. This should be fixed.
      * A human-readable timestamp has been added to Unison's archive
        files.
      * The semantics of Path and Name regular expressions now  
correspond
        better.
      * Some minor improvements to the text UI (e.g. a command for going
        back to previous items)
      * The organization of the export directory has changed --  
should be
        easier to find / download things now.

    Changes since 1.200:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * This version has not been tested extensively on Windows.
      * Major internal changes designed to make unison safer to run  
at the
        same time as the replicas are being changed by the user.
      * Internal performance improvements.

    Changes since 1.190:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * A number of internal functions have been changed to reduce the
        amount of memory allocation, especially during the first
        synchronization. This should help power users with very big
        replicas.
      * Reimplementation of low-level remote procedure call stuff, in
        preparation for adding rsync-like smart file transfer in a later
        release.
      * Miscellaneous bug fixes.

    Changes since 1.180:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Archive format has changed. Make sure you
        synchronize your replicas before upgrading, to avoid spurious
        conflicts. The first sync after upgrading will be slow.
      * Fixed some small bugs in the interpretation of ignore patterns.
      * Fixed some problems that were preventing the Windows version  
from
        working correctly when click-started.
      * Fixes to treatment of file permissions under Windows, which were
        causing spurious reports of different permissions when
        synchronizing between windows and unix systems.
      * Fixed one more non-tail-recursive list processing function,  
which
        was causing stack overflows when synchronizing very large
        replicas.

    Changes since 1.169:
      * The text user interface now provides commands for ignoring  
files.
      * We found and fixed some more non-tail-recursive list processing
        functions. Some power users have reported success with very  
large
        replicas.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: Files ending in .tmp are no longer ignored
        automatically. If you want to ignore such files, put an
        appropriate ignore pattern in your profile.
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The syntax of ignore and follow patterns  
has
        changed. Instead of putting a line of the form
                  ignore = <regexp>
        in your profile (.unison/default.prf), you should put:
                  ignore = Regexp <regexp>
        Moreover, two other styles of pattern are also recognized:
                  ignore = Name <name>
        matches any path in which one component matches <name>, while
                  ignore = Path <path>
        matches exactly the path <path>.
        Standard "globbing" conventions can be used in <name> and  
<path>:
           + a ? matches any single character except /
           + a * matches any sequence of characters not including /
           + [xyz] matches any character from the set {x, y, z }
           + {a,bb,ccc} matches any one of a, bb, or ccc.
        See the user manual for some examples.

    Changes since 1.146:
      * Some users were reporting stack overflows when synchronizing  
huge
        directories. We found and fixed some non-tail-recursive list
        processing functions, which we hope will solve the problem.  
Please
        give it a try and let us know.
      * Major additions to the documentation.

    Changes since 1.142:
      * Major internal tidying and many small bugfixes.
      * Major additions to the user manual.
      * Unison can now be started with no arguments - it will prompt
        automatically for the name of a profile file containing the  
roots
        to be synchronized. This makes it possible to start the  
graphical
        UI from a desktop icon.
      * Fixed a small bug where the text UI on NT was raising a 'no such
        signal' exception.

    Changes since 1.139:
      * The precompiled windows binary in the last release was compiled
        with an old OCaml compiler, causing propagation of  
permissions not
        to work (and perhaps leading to some other strange behaviors  
we've
        heard reports about). This has been corrected. If you're using
        precompiled binaries on Windows, please upgrade.
      * Added a -debug command line flag, which controls debugging of
        various modules. Say -debug XXX to enable debug tracing for  
module
        XXX, or -debug all to turn on absolutely everything.
      * Fixed a small bug where the text UI on NT was raising a 'no such
        signal' exception.

    Changes since 1.111:
      * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: The names and formats of the preference  
files
        in the .unison directory have changed. In particular:
           + the file "prefs" should be renamed to default.prf
           + the contents of the file "ignore" should be merged into
             default.prf. Each line of the form REGEXP in ignore should
             become a line of the form ignore = REGEXP in default.prf.
      * Unison now handles permission bits and symbolic links. See the
        manual for details.
      * You can now have different preference files in your .unison
        directory. If you start unison like this
              unison profilename
        (i.e. with just one "anonymous" command-line argument), then the
        file ~/.unison/profilename.prf will be loaded instead of
        default.prf.
      * Some improvements to terminal handling in the text user  
interface
      * Added a switch -killServer that terminates the remote server
        process when the unison client is shutting down, even when using
        sockets for communication. (By default, a remote server created
        using ssh/rsh is terminated automatically, while a socket server
        is left running.)
      * When started in 'socket server' mode, unison prints 'server
        started' on stderr when it is ready to accept connections. (This
        may be useful for scripts that want to tell when a socket-mode
        server has finished initalization.)
      * We now make a nightly mirror of our current internal development
        tree, in case anyone wants an up-to-the-minute version to hack
        around with.
      * Added a file CONTRIB with some suggestions for how to help us  
make
        Unison better.





------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
<font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12h2crag0/M=362335.6886445.7839731.1510227/D=groups/S=1705004726:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1123824086/A=2894361/R=0/SIG=13jmebhbo/*http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/education/digitaldivide/?source=YAHOO&cmpgn=GRP&RTP=http://groups.yahoo.com/">In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide!</a>.</font>
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unison-users/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/