Re: two openrsync caveats

On 2026-06-08 10:30:22+0200, Claudio Jeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Right now openrsync is limited in functionality and is primarily present
> for rpki-client. The limited functionality makes it unusable for generic
> use and so any diff or change like the above will not be considered since it
> is simply not ready.
> 
> First problem to solve is to remove the mmap usage in openrsync. After
> that modern protocol versions need to be added. Once that is in place one
> can start a discussion about using openrsync as a default on OpenBSD.

On 2026-06-08 09:41:06-0000, Stuart Henderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2026-06-06, dzwdz <[email protected]> wrote:
> > This is also confusing for downstream users of openrsync.  Due to the
> > recent controversies surrounding upstream rsync, some people are moving
> > to openrsync explicitly to avoid using upstream rsync
> 
> openrsync is not a suitable replacement for standard use-cases of rsync.
> It was specifically written for rpki-client and misses things that were
> not needed for that.
> 
> Apple have a heavily modified version of openrsync which is closer to
> being usable for standard cases, but it still has issues.
> 
> In particular all openrsync versions only support the old pre-2008 rsync
> protocol version, which means that the full file list is transferred
> before sending files; with a large set of files that is significantly
> slower and takes many more resources on both sides than the incremental
> file list in newer protocol versions.

Would it be good to mention something about these things in the man
page? I have been trying to use openrsync and work through the differences in
options from rsync, and see what else I'm doing wrong that --exclude
doesn't seem to be working for me (I'm still figuring that out). Had I
known the above I might not have spent the time so far. Also there was a
recent Hacker News discussion where people talked about trying openrsync
due to reported problems with rsync, or something. These clarifications
could be valuable to people.

Just a question. Unfortunately not ready to provide a patch at this time. Thanks.

-Luke Call