NEWS for rsync 3.3.1 (UNRELEASED)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Fixed a buffer overflow when the sum2 digest algorithm is SHA1.

BUG FIXES:

Fixed the included popt to avoid a memory error on modern gcc versions.
Fixed an incorrect extern variable's type that caused an ACL issue on macOS.

INTERNAL:

Updated included popt to version 1.19.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Various improvements to the release scripts and git setup.
Improved packaging/var-checker to identify variable type issues.

NEWS for rsync 3.3.0 (6 Apr 2024)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug with --sparse --inplace where a trailing gap in the source file would not clear out the trailing data in the destination file.
Fixed an buffer overflow in the checksum2 code if SHA1 is being used for the checksum2 algorithm.
Fixed an issue when rsync is compiled using _FORTIFY_SOURCE so that the extra tests don't complain about a strlcpy() limit value (which was too large, even though it wasn't possible for the larger value to cause an overflow).
Add a backtick to the list of characters that the filename quoting needs to escape using backslashes.
Fixed a string-comparison issue in the internal handling of --progress (a locale such as tr_TR.utf-8 needed the internal triggering of --info options to use upper-case flag names to ensure that they match).
Make sure that a local transfer marks the sender side as trusted.
Change the argv handling to work with a newer popt library -- one that likes to free more data than it used to.
Rsync now calls OpenSSL_add_all_algorithms() when compiled against an older openssl library.
Fixed a problem in the daemon auth for older protocols (29 and before) if the openssl library is being used to compute MD4 checksums.
Fixed rsync -VV on Cygwin -- it needed a flush of stdout.
Fixed an old stats bug that counted devices as symlinks.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Enhanced rrsync with the -no-overwrite option that allows you to ensure that existing files on your restricted but writable directory can't be modified.
Enhanced the manpages to mark links with .UR & .UE. If your nroff doesn't support these idioms, touch the file .md2man-force in the source directory so that md-convert gets called with the --force-link-text option, and that should ensure that your manpages are still readable even with the ignored markup.
Some manpage improvements on the handling of [global] modules.
Changed the mapfrom & mapto perl scripts (in the support dir) into a single python script named idmap. Converted a couple more perl scripts into python.
Changed the mnt-excl perl script (in the support dir) into a python script.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Updated config.guess (timestamp 2023-01-01) and config.sub (timestamp 2023-01-21).

NEWS for rsync 3.2.7 (20 Oct 2022)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed the client-side validating of the remote sender's filtering behavior.
More fixes for the "unrequested file-list name" name, including a copy of "/" with --relative enabled and a copy with a lot of related paths with --relative enabled (often derived from a --files-from list).
When rsync gets an unpack error on an ACL, mention the filename.
Avoid over-setting sanitize_paths when a daemon is serving "/" (even if "use chroot" is false).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added negotiated daemon-auth support that allows a stronger checksum digest to be used to validate a user's login to the daemon. Added SHA512, SHA256, and SHA1 digests to MD5 & MD4. These new digests are at the highest priority in the new daemon-auth negotiation list.
Added support for the SHA1 digest in file checksums. While this tends to be overkill, it is available if someone really needs it. This overly-long checksum is at the lowest priority in the normal checksum negotiation list. See --checksum-choice (--cc) and the RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST environment var for how to customize this.
Improved the xattr hash table to use a 64-bit key without slowing down the key's computation. This should make extra sure that a hash collision doesn't happen.
If the --version option is repeated (e.g. -VV) then the information is output in a (still readable) JSON format. Client side only.
The script support/json-rsync-version is available to get the JSON style version output from any rsync. The script accepts either text on stdin or an arg that specifies an rsync executable to run with a doubled --version option. If the text we get isn't already in JSON format, it is converted. Newer rsync versions will provide more complete json info than older rsync versions. Various tweaks are made to keep the flag names consistent across versions.
The use chroot daemon parameter now defaults to "unset" so that rsync can use chroot when it works and a sanitized copy when chroot is not supported (e.g., for a non-root daemon). Explicitly setting the parameter to true or false (on or off) behaves the same way as before.
The --fuzzy option was optimized a bit to try to cut down on the amount of computations when considering a big pool of files. The simple heuristic from Kenneth Finnegan resulted in about a 2x speedup.
If rsync is forced to use protocol 29 or before (perhaps due to talking to an rsync before 3.0.0), the modify time of a file is limited to 4-bytes. Rsync now interprets this value as an unsigned integer so that a current year past 2038 can continue to be represented. This does mean that years prior to 1970 cannot be represented in an older protocol, but this trade-off seems like the right choice given that (1) 2038 is very rapidly approaching, and (2) newer protocols support a much wider range of old and new dates.
The rsync client now treats an empty destination arg as an error, just like it does for an empty source arg. This doesn't affect a host: arg (which is treated the same as host:.) since the arg is not completely empty. The use of --old-args (including via RSYNC_OLD_ARGS) allows the prior behavior of treating an empty destination arg as a ".".

PACKAGING RELATED:

The checksum code now uses openssl's EVP methods, which gets rid of various deprecation warnings and makes it easy to support more digest methods. On newer systems, the MD4 digest is marked as legacy in the openssl code, which makes openssl refuse to support it via EVP. You can choose to ignore this and allow rsync's MD4 code to be used for older rsync connections (when talking to an rsync prior to 3.0.0) or you can choose to configure rsync to tell openssl to enable legacy algorithms (see below).
A simple openssl config file is supplied that can be installed for rsync to use. If you install packaging/openssl-rsync.cnf to a public spot (such as /etc/ssl/openssl-rsync.cnf) and then run configure with the option --with-openssl-conf=/path/name.cnf, this will cause rsync to export the configured path in the OPENSSL_CONF environment variable (when the variable is not already set). This will enable openssl's MD4 code for rsync to use.
The packager may wish to include an explicit "use chroot = true" in the top section of their supplied /etc/rsyncd.conf file if the daemon is being installed to run as the root user (though rsync should behave the same even with the value unset, a little extra paranoia doesn't hurt).
I've noticed that some packagers haven't installed support/nameconvert for users to use in their chrooted rsync configs. Even if it is not installed as an executable script (to avoid a python3 dependency) it would be good to install it with the other rsync-related support scripts.
It would be good to add support/json-rsync-version to the list of installed support scripts.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.6 (9 Sep 2022)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

More path-cleaning improvements in the file-list validation code to avoid rejecting of valid args.
A file-list validation fix for a --files-from file that ends without a line-terminating character.
Added a safety check that prevents the sender from removing destination files when a local copy using --remove-source-files has some files that are shared between the sending & receiving hierarchies, including the case where the source dir & destination dir are identical.
Fixed a bug in the internal MD4 checksum code that could cause the digest to be sporadically incorrect (the openssl version was/is fine).
A minor tweak to rrsync added "copy-devices" to the list of known args, but left it disabled by default.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Rename --protect-args to --secluded-args to make it clearer how it differs from the default backslash-escaped arg-protecting behavior of rsync. The old option names are still accepted. The environment-variable override did not change its name.

PACKAGING RELATED:

The configure option --with-protected-args was renamed to --with-secluded-args. This option makes --secluded-args the default rsync behavior instead of using backslash escaping for protecting args.
The mkgitver script now makes sure that a .git dir/file is in the top-level source dir before calling git describe. It also runs a basic check on the version value. This should avoid using an unrelated git description for rsync's version.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The configure script no longer sets the -pedantic-errors CFLAG (which it used to try to do only for gcc).
The name_num_obj struct was modified to allow its dynamic name_num_item list to be initialized in a better way.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.5 (14 Aug 2022)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Added some file-list safety checking that helps to ensure that a rogue sending rsync can't add unrequested top-level names and/or include recursive names that should have been excluded by the sender. These extra safety checks only require the receiver rsync to be updated. When dealing with an untrusted sending host, it is safest to copy into a dedicated destination directory for the remote content (i.e. don't copy into a destination directory that contains files that aren't from the remote host unless you trust the remote host). Fixes CVE-2022-29154.
A fix for CVE-2022-37434 in the bundled zlib (buffer overflow issue).

BUG FIXES:

Fixed the handling of filenames specified with backslash-quoted wildcards when the default remote-arg-escaping is enabled.
Fixed the configure check for signed char that was causing a host that defaults to unsigned characters to generate bogus rolling checksums. This made rsync send mostly literal data for a copy instead of finding matching data in the receiver's basis file (for a file that contains high-bit characters).
Lots of manpage improvements, including an attempt to better describe how include/exclude filters work.
If rsync is compiled with an xxhash 0.8 library and then moved to a system with a dynamically linked xxhash 0.7 library, we now detect this and disable the XX3 hashes (since these routines didn't stabilize until 0.8).

ENHANCEMENTS:

The --trust-sender option was added as a way to bypass the extra file-list safety checking (should that be required).

PACKAGING RELATED:

A note to those wanting to patch older rsync versions: the changes in this release requires the quoted argument change from 3.2.4. Then, you'll want every single code change from 3.2.5 since there is no fluff in this release.
The build date that goes into the manpages is now based on the developer's release date, not on the build's local-timezone interpretation of the date.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Configure now defaults GETGROUPS_T to gid_t when cross compiling.
Configure now looks for the bsd/string.h include file in order to fix the build on a host that has strlcpy() in the main libc but not defined in the main string.h file.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.4 (15 Apr 2022)

Changes in this version:

BEHAVIOR CHANGES:

A new form of arg protection was added that works similarly to the older --protect-args (-s) option but in a way that avoids breaking things like rrsync (the restricted rsync script): rsync now uses backslash escaping for sending "shell-active" characters to the remote shell (such as $(){}<>#& and others). This includes spaces, so fetching a remote file via a quoted filename value now works by default without any extra quoting:
```
    rsync -aiv host:'a simple file.pdf' .
```
Wildcards are not escaped in filename args, but they are escaped in options like the --suffix and --usermap values.

If a script depends on the old arg behavior (perhaps because it quotes or protects the args already, or perhaps because it expects arg splitting), there are two easy ways to get things going with a modern rsync: either export RSYNC_OLD_ARGS=1 in the script's environment (perhaps in the script itself) or add the option --old-args to the rsync commands that are run. See also the ADVANCED USAGE section of rsync's manpage for how to use a more modern arg style.
A long-standing bug was preventing rsync from figuring out the current locale's decimal point character, which made rsync always output numbers using the "C" locale. Since this is now fixed in 3.2.4, a script that parses rsync's decimal numbers (e.g. from the verbose footer) may want to setup the environment in a way that the output continues to be in the C locale. For instance, one of the following should work fine:
```
    export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
```
or if iconv translations are needed:
```
    if [ "${LC_ALL:-}" ]; then
        export LANG="$LC_ALL"
        export LC_CTYPE="$LC_ALL"
        unset LC_ALL
    fi
    export LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
```

SECURITY FIXES:

A fix for CVE-2018-25032 in the bundled zlib (memory corruption issue).

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug with --inplace + --sparse (and a lack of --whole-file) where the destination file could get reconstructed with bogus data. Since the bug can also be avoided by using (the seemingly redundant) --no-W on the receiving side, the latest rsync will now send --no-W to a remote receiver when this option combination occurs. If your client rsync is not new enough to do this for you (or if you're just paranoid), you can manually specify --no-W -M--no-W (when not using --whole-file) to make sure the bug is avoided.
Fixed a bug with --mkpath if a single-file copy specifies an existing destination dir with a non-existing destination filename.
Fixed --update -vv to output "is uptodate" instead of "is newer" messages for files that are being skipped due to an identical modify time. (This was a new output quirk in 3.2.3.)
When doing an append transfer, the sending side's file must not get shorter or it is skipped. Fixes a crash that could occur when the size changes to 0 in the middle of the send negotiations.
When dealing with special files (see --specials) in an alt-dest hierarchy, rsync now checks the non-permission mode bits to ensure that the 2 special files are really the same before hard-linking them together.
Fixed a bug where --delay-updates with stale partial data could cause a file to fail to update.
Fixed a few places that would output an INFO message with --info=NAME that should only have been output given --verbose or --itemize-changes.
Avoid a weird failure if you run a local copy with a (useless) --rsh option that contains a V in the command.
Fixed a long-standing compression bug where the compression level of the first file transferred affected the level for all future files. Also, the per-file compression skipping has apparently never worked, so it is now documented as being ineffective.
Fixed a truncate error when a --write-devices copy wrote a file onto a device that was shorter than the device.
Made --write-devices support both --checksum and --no-whole-file when copying to a device.
Improved how the --stop-at, --stop-after, and (the deprecated) --time-limit options check to see if the allowed time is over, which should make rsync exit more consistently.
Tweak --progress to display "??:??:??" when the time-remaining value is so large as to be meaningless.
Silence some chmod warnings about symlinks when it looks like we have a function to set their permissions but they can't really be set.
Fixed a potential issue in git-set-file-times when handling commits with high-bit characters in the description & when handling a description that might mimic the git raw-commit deliniators. (See the support dir.)
The bundled systemd/rsync.service file now includes Restart=on-failure.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Use openssl's -verify_hostname option in the rsync-ssl script.
Added extra info to the "FILENAME exists" output of --ignore-existing when --info=skip2 is used. The skip message becomes "FILENAME exists (INFO)" where the INFO is one of "type change", "sum change" (requires --checksum), "file change" (based on the quick check), "attr change", or "uptodate". Prior versions only supported --info=skip1.
Added the --fsync option (promoted from the patches repo).
Added the --copy-devices option. Compared to the historical version from the rsync-patches repo, this version: properly handles --checksum; fixes a truncation bug when doing an --inplace copy onto a longer file; fixes several bugs in the --itemize output; and only the sending side needs the enhanced rsync for the copy to work.
Reduced memory usage for an incremental transfer that has a bunch of small directories.
The rsync daemon can now handle a client address with an implied "%scope" suffix.
Added support for --atimes on macOS and fixed a bug where it wouldn't work without --times.
Rsync can now update the xattrs on a read-only file when your user can temporarily add user-write permission to the file. (It always worked for a root transfer.)
Rsync can now work around an --inplace update of a file that is being refused due to the Linux fs.protected_regular sysctl setting.
When --chown, --usermap, or --groupmap is specified, rsync now makes sure that the appropriate --owner and/or --group options are enabled.
Added the --info=NONREG setting to control if rsync should warn about non-regular files in the transfer. This is enabled by default (keeping the behavior the same as before), so specifying --info=nonreg0 can be used to turn the warnings off.
An optional asm optimization for the rolling checksum from Shark64. Enable it with ./configure --enable-roll-asm.
Using --debug=FILTER now outputs a caution message if a filter rule has trailing whitespace.
Transformed rrsync into a python script with improvements:
- Security has been beefed up.
- The known rsync options were updated to include recent additions.
- Make rrsync reject --copy-links (-L), --copy-dirlinks (-k), & --keep-dirlinks (-K) by default to make it harder to exploit any out-of-subdir symlinks.
- A new rrsync option of -munge tells rrsync to always enable rsync's --munge-links option on the server side.
- A new rrsync option of -no-lock disables a new single-use locking idiom that is the default when -ro is not used (useful with -munge).
- A new rrsync option of -no-del disables all --remove* and --delete* rsync options on the server side.
- The log format has been tweaked slightly to add seconds to the timestamp and to output the command executed as a tuple (making the args clearer).
- An rrsync.1 manpage was added (in the support dir with rrsync).
Added options to the lsh script to facilitate rrsync testing. (See the support dir.)
Transformed the atomic-rsync script into a python script and added the ability to ignore one or more non-zero exit codes. By default, it now ignores code 24, the file-vanished exit code. (See the support dir.)
Transformed the munge-symlinks script into python. (See the support dir.)
Improved the rsync-no-vanished script to not join stdout & stderr together. (See the support dir.)
Work around a glibc bug where lchmod() breaks in a chroot w/o /proc mounted.
Try to support a client that sent a remote rsync a wacko stderr file handle (such as an older File::RsyncP perl library used by BackupPC).
Lots of manpage improvements, including better HTML versions.

PACKAGING RELATED:

Give configure the --with-rrsync option if you want make install to install the (now python3) rrsync script and its new manpage.
If the rrsync script is installed, its package should be changed to depend on python3 and the (suggested but not mandatory) python3 braceexpand lib.
When creating a package from a non-release version (w/o a git checkout), the packager can elect to create git-version.h and define RSYNC_GITVER to the string they want --version to output. (The file is still auto-generated using the output of git describe when building inside a non-shallow git checkout, though.)
Renamed configure's --enable-simd option to --enable-roll-simd and added the option --enable-roll-asm to use the new asm version of the code. Both are x86_64/amd64 only.
Renamed configure's --enable-asm option to --enable-md5-asm to avoid confusion with the asm option for the rolling checksum. It is also honored even when openssl crypto is in use. This allows: normal MD4 & MD5, normal MD4 + asm MD5, openssl MD4 & MD5, or openssl MD4 + asm MD5 depending on the configure options selected.
Made SIMD & asm configure checks default to "no" on non-Linux hosts due to various reports of problems on NetBSD & macOS hosts. These were also tweaked to allow enabling the feature on a host_cpu of amd64 (was only allowed on x86_64 before).
Fixed configure to not fail at the SIMD check when cross-compiling.
Improved the IPv6 determination in configure.
Compile the C files with -pedantic-errors (when possible) so that we will get warned if a static initialization overflows in the future (among other things).
When linking with an external zlib, rsync renames its read_buf() function to read_buf_() to avoid a symbol clash on an unpatched zlib.
Added a SECURITY.md file.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Made it easier to write rsync tests that diff the output while also checking the status code, and used the idiom to improve the existing tests. (See the checkdiff and checkdiff2 idioms in the testsuite/*.test files.
The packaging scripts & related python lib got some minor enhancements.

INTERNAL

Use setenv() instead of putenv() when it is available.
Improve the logic in compat.c so that we don't need to try to remember to sprinkle !local_server exceptions throughout the protocol logic.
One more C99 Flexible Array improvement (started in the last release) and make use of the C99 %zd format string when printing size_t values (when possible).
Use mallinfo2() instead of mallinfo(), when available.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug in the xattr code that was freeing the wrong object when trying to cleanup the xattr list.
Fixed a bug in the xattr code that was not leaving room for the "rsync." prefix in some instances where it needed to be added.
Restored the ability to use --bwlimit=0 to specify no bandwidth limit. (It was accidentally broken in 3.2.2.)
Fixed a bug when combining --delete-missing-args with --no-implied-dirs & -R where rsync might create the destination path of a missing arg. The code also avoids some superfluous warnings for nested paths of removed args.
Fixed an issue where hard-linked devices could cause the rdev_major value to get out of sync between the sender and the receiver, which could cause a device to get created with the wrong major value in its major,minor pair.
Rsync now complains about a missing --temp-dir before starting any file transfers.
A completely empty source arg is now a fatal error. This doesn't change the handling of implied dot-dir args such as "localhost:" and such.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Allow --max-alloc=0 to specify no limit to the alloc sanity check.
Allow --block-size=SIZE to specify the size using units (e.g. "100K").
The name of the id-0 user & group are now sent to the receiver along with the other user/group names in the transfer (instead of assuming that both sides have the same id-0 names).
Added the --stop-after and --stop-at options (with a --time-limit alias for --stop-after). This is an enhanced version of the time-limit patch from the patches repo.
Added the name converter daemon parameter to make it easier to convert user & group names inside a chrooted daemon module. This is based on the nameconverter patch with some improvements, including a tweak to the request protocol (so if you used this patch in the past, be sure to update your converter script to use newlines instead of null chars).
Added --crtimes (-N) option for preserving the file's create time (I believe that this is macOS only at the moment).
Added --mkpath option to tell rsync that it should create a non-existing path component of the destination arg.
Added --stderr=errors|all|client to replace the --msgs2stderr and --no-msgs2stderr options (which are still accepted). The default use of stderr was changed to be --stderr=errors where all the processes that have stderr available output directly to stderr, which should help error messages get to the user more quickly, especially when doing a push (which includes local copying). This also allows rsync to exit quickly when a receiver failure occurs, since rsync doesn't need to try to keep the connection alive long enough for the fatal error to go from the receiver to the generator to the sender. The old default can be requested via --stderr=client. Also changed is that a non-default stderr mode is conveyed to the remote rsync (using the older option names) instead of requiring the user to use --remote-option (-M) to tell the remote rsync what to do.
Added the ability to specify "@netgroup" names to the hosts allow and hosts deny daemon parameters. This is a finalized version of the netgroup-auth patch from the patches repo.
Rsync can now hard-link symlinks on FreeBSD due to it making use of the linkat() function when it is available.
Output file+line info on out-of-memory & overflow errors while also avoiding the output of alternate build-dir path info that is not useful to the user.
Change configure to know that Cygwin supports Linux xattrs.
Improved the testsuite on FreeBSD & Cygwin.
Added some compatibility code for HPE NonStop platforms.
Improved the INSTALL.md info.
Added a few more suffixes to the default skip-compress list.
Improved configure's error handling to notify about several issues at once instead of one by one (for the newest optional features).

INTERNAL:

Use a simpler overflow check idiom in a few spots.
Use a C99 Flexible Array for a trailing variable-size filename in a struct (with a fallback to the old 1-char string kluge for older compilers).

NEWS for rsync 3.2.2 (4 Jul 2020)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Avoid a crash when a daemon module enables transfer logging without setting a log format value.
Fixed installing rsync-ssl script from an alternate build dir.
Fixed the updating of configure.sh from an alternate build dir.
Apple requires the asm function name to begin with an underscore.
Avoid a test failure in the daemon test when --atimes is disabled.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Allow the server side to restrict checksum & compression choices via the same environment variables the client uses. The env vars can be divided into "client list & server list" by the "&" char or the same list can apply to both.
Simplify how the negotiation environment variables apply when interacting with an older rsync and also when a list contains only invalid names.
Do not allow a negotiated checksum or compression choice of "none" unless the user authorized it via an environment variable or command-line option.
Added the --max-alloc=SIZE option to be able to override the memory allocator's sanity-check limit. It defaults to 1G (as before) but the error message when exceeding it specifically mentions the new option so that you can differentiate an out-of-memory error from a failure of this limit. It also allows you to specify the value via the RSYNC_MAX_ALLOC environment variable.
Add the "open atime" daemon parameter to allow a daemon to always enable or disable the use of O_NOATIME (the default is to let the user control it).
The default systemd config was changed to remove the ProtectHome=on setting since rsync is often used to serve files in /home and /root and this seemed a bit too strict. Feel free to use systemctl edit rsync to add that restriction (or maybe ProtectHome=read-only), if you like. See the 3.2.0 NEWS for the other restrictions that were added compared to 3.1.3.
The memory allocation functions now automatically check for a failure and die when out of memory. This eliminated some caller-side check-and-die code and added some missing sanity-checking of allocations.
Put optimizations into their own list in the --version output.
Improved the manpage a bit more.

PACKAGING RELATED:

Prepared the checksum code for an upcoming xxHash release that provides new XXH3 (64-bit) & XXH128 (128-bit) checksum routines. These will not be compiled into rsync until the xxhash v0.8.0 include files are installed on the build host, and that release is a few weeks away at the time this was written. So, if it's now the future and you have packaged and installed xxhash-0.8.0-devel, a fresh rebuild of rsync 3.2.2 will give you the new checksum routines. Just make sure that the new rsync package depends on xxhash >= 0.8.0.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Moved the version number out of configure.ac into its own version.h file so that we don't need to reconfigure just because the version number changes.
Moved the daemon parameter list into daemon-parm.txt so that an awk script can create the interrelated structs and accessors that loadparm.c needs.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.1 (22 Jun 2020)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a potential build issue with the MD5 assembly-language code by removing some non-portable directives.
Use the preprocessor with the asm file to ensure that if the code is unneeded, it doesn't get built.
Avoid the stack getting set to executable when including the asm code.
Some improvements in the SIMD configure testing to try to avoid build issues, such as avoiding a clang++ core dump when -g is combined with -O2. Note that clang++ is quite buggy in this area, and it does still crash for some folks, so just use --disable-simd if you need to avoid their buggy compiler (since the configure test is apparently not finding all the compilers that will to crash and burn).
Fixed an issue in the md2man script when building from an alternate dir.
Disable --atimes on macOS (it apparently just ignores the atime change).

ENHANCEMENTS:

The use of --backup-dir=STR now implies --backup.
Added --zl=NUM as a short-hand for --compress-level=NUM.
Added --early-input=FILE option that allows the client to send some data to a daemon's (optional) "early exec" script on its stdin.
Mention atimes in the capabilities list that --version outputs.
Mention either "default protect-args" or "optional protect-args" in the --version capabilities depending on how rsync was configured.
Some info on optimizations is now elided from the --version capabilities since they aren't really user-facing capabilities. You can still see the info (plus the status of a couple extra optimizations) by repeating the --version option (e.g. -VV).
Updated various URLs to be https instead of http.
Some documentation improvements.

PACKAGING RELATED:

If you had to use --disable-simd for 3.2.0, you might want to try removing that and see if it will succeed or auto-disable. Some buggy clang++ compilers are still not auto disabled, though.
The MD5 asm code is now under its own configure flag (not shared with the SIMD setting), so if you have any issues compiling it, re-run configure with --disable-asm.
Merged the OLDNEWS.md file into NEWS.md.

NEWS for rsync 3.2.0 (19 Jun 2020)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Avoid a potential out-of-bounds read in daemon mode if argc can be made to become 0.
Fix the default list of skip-compress files for non-daemon transfers.
Fix xattr filter rules losing an 'x' attribute in a non-local transfer.
Avoid an error when a check for a potential fuzzy file happens to reference a directory.
Make the atomic-rsync helper script have a more consistent error-exit.
Make sure that a signal handler's use of exit_cleanup() calls _exit() instead of exit().
Various zlib fixes, including security fixes for CVE-2016-9843, CVE-2016-9842, CVE-2016-9841, and CVE-2016-9840.
Fixed an issue with --remove-source-files not removing a source symlink when combined with --copy-links.
Fixed a bug where the daemon would fail to write early fatal error messages to the client, such as refused or unknown command-line options.
Fixed the block-size validation logic when dealing with older protocols.
Some rrsync fixes and enhancements to handle the latest options.
Fixed a problem with the --link-dest|--copy-dest code when --xattrs was specified along with multiple alternate-destination directories (it could possibly choose a bad file match while trying to find a better xattr match).
Fixed a couple bugs in the handling of files with the --sparse option.
Fixed a bug in the writing of the batch.sh file (w/--write-batch) when the source & destination args were not last on the command-line.
Avoid a hang when an overabundance of messages clogs up all the I/O buffers.
Fixed a mismatch in the RSYNC_PID values put into the environment of pre-xfer exec and a post-xfer exec.
Fixed a crash in the --iconv code.
Fixed a rare crash in the popt_unalias() code.

ENHANCEMENTS:

The default systemd config was made stricter by default. For instance, ProtectHome=on (which hides content in /root and /home/USER dirs), ProtectSystem=full (which makes /usr, /boot, & /etc dirs read-only), and PrivateDevices=on (which hides devices). You can override any of these using the standard systemctl edit rsync and add one or more directives under a [Service] heading (and restart the rsync service).
Various checksum enhancements, including the optional use of openssl's MD4 & MD5 checksum algorithms, some x86-64 optimizations for the rolling checksum, some x86-64 optimizations for the (non-openssl) MD5 checksum, the addition of xxHash checksum support, and a negotiation heuristic that ensures that it is easier to add new checksum algorithms in the future. The environment variable RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST can be used to customize the preference order of the negotiation, or use --checksum-choice (--cc) to force a choice.
Various compression enhancements, including the addition of zstd and lz4 compression algorithms and a negotiation heuristic that picks the best compression option supported by both sides. The environment variable RSYNC_COMPRESS_LIST can be used to customize the preference order of the negotiation, or use --compress-choice (--zc) to force a choice.
Added a --debug=NSTR option that outputs details of the new negotiation strings (for checksums and compression). The first level just outputs the result of each negotiation on the client, level 2 outputs the values of the strings that were sent to and received from the server, and level 3 outputs all those values on the server side too (when the server was given the debug option).
The --debug=OPTS command-line option is no longer auto-forwarded to the remote rsync which allows for the client and server to have different levels of debug specified. This also allows for newer debug options to be specified, such as using --debug=NSTR to see the negotiated hash result, without having the command fail if the server version is too old to handle that debug item. Use -M--debug=OPTS to send the options to the remote side.
Added the --atimes option based on the long-standing patch (just with some fixes that the patch has been needing).
Added --open-noatime option to open files using O_NOATIME.
Added the --write-devices option based on the long-standing patch.
Added openssl & preliminary gnutls support to the rsync-ssl script, which is now installed by default. This was unified with the old stunnel-rsync helper script to simplify packaging. Note that the script accepts the use of --type=gnutls for gnutls testing, but does not look for gnutls-cli on the path yet. The use of --type=gnutls will not work right until gnutls-cli no longer drops data.
Rsync was enhanced to set the RSYNC_PORT environment variable when running a daemon-over-rsh script. Its value is the user-specified port number (set via --port or an rsync:// URL) or 0 if the user didn't override the port.
Added the proxy protocol daemon parameter that allows your rsyncd to know the real remote IP when it is setup behind a proxy.
Added negated matching to the daemon's refuse options setting by using match strings that start with a ! (such as !compress*). This lets you refuse all options except for a particular approved list, for example. It also lets rsync refuse certain options by default (such as write-devices) while allowing the config to override that, as desired.
Added the early exec daemon parameter that runs a script before the transfer parameters are known, allowing some early setup based on module name.
Added status output in response to a signal (via both SIGINFO & SIGVTALRM).
Added --copy-as=USER option to give some extra security to root-run rsync commands into/from untrusted directories (such as backups and restores).
When resuming the transfer of a file in the --partial-dir, rsync will now update that partial file in-place instead of creating yet another tmp file copy. This requires both sender & receiver to be at least v3.2.0.
Added support for RSYNC_SHELL & RSYNC_NO_XFER_EXEC environment variables that affect the early, pre-xfer, and post-xfer exec rsync daemon parameters.
Optimize the --fuzzy --fuzzy heuristic to avoid the fuzzy directory scan until all other basis-file options are exhausted (such as --link-dest).
Have the daemon log include the normal-exit sent/received stats when the transfer exited with an error when possible (i.e. if it is the sender).
The daemon now locks its pid file (when configured to use one) so that it will not fail to start when the file exists but no daemon is running.
Various manpage improvements, including some html representations (that aren't installed by default).
Made -V the short option for --version and improved its information.
Pass the -4 or -6 option to the ssh command, making it easier to type than --rsh='ssh -4' (or the -6 equivalent).
Added example config for rsyncd SSL proxy configs to rsyncd.conf.
More errors messages now mention if the error is coming from the sender or the receiver.

PACKAGING RELATED:

Add installed bash script: /usr/bin/rsync-ssl
Add installed manpage: /usr/man/man1/rsync-ssl.1
Tweak auxiliary doc file names, such as: README.md, INSTALL.md, & NEWS.md.
The rsync-ssl script wants to run openssl or stunnel4, so consider adding a dependency for one of those options (though it's probably fine to just let it complain about being unable to find the program and let the user decide if they want to install one or the other).
If you packaged rsync + rsync-ssl + rsync-ssl-daemon as separate packages, the rsync-ssl package is now gone (rsync-ssl should be considered to be mainstream now that Samba requires SSL for its rsync daemon).
Add build dependency for liblz4-dev, libxxhash-dev, libzstd-dev, and libssl-dev. These development libraries will give rsync extra compression algorithms, extra checksum algorithms, and allow use of openssl's crypto lib for (potentially) faster MD4/MD5 checksums.
Add build dependency for g++ or clang++ on x86_64 systems to enable the SIMD checksum optimizations.
Add build dependency for either python3-cmarkcfm or python3-commonmark to allow for patching of manpages or building a git release. This is not required for a release-tar build, since it comes with pre-built manpages. Note that cmarkcfm is faster than commonmark, but they generate the same data. The commonmark dependency is easiest to install since it's native python, and can even be installed via pip3 install --user commonmark if you want to just install it for the build user.
Remove yodl build dependency (if it was even listed before).

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Silenced some annoying warnings about major() & minor() by improving an autoconf include-file check.
Converted the manpages from yodl to markdown. They are now processed via a simple python3 script using the cmarkgfm or commonmark library. This should make it easier to package rsync, since yodl is rather obscure.
Improved some configure checks to work better with strict C99 compilers.
Some perl building/packaging scripts were recoded into awk and python3.
Some defines in byteorder.h were changed into static inline functions that will help to ensure that the args don't get evaluated multiple times on "careful alignment" hosts.
Some code typos were fixed (as pointed out by a Fossies run).

NEWS for rsync 3.1.3 (28 Jan 2018)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Fixed a buffer overrun in the protocol's handling of xattr names and ensure that the received name is null terminated.
Fix an issue with --protect-args where the user could specify the arg in the protected-arg list and short-circuit some of the arg-sanitizing code.

BUG FIXES:

Don't output about a new backup dir without appropriate info verbosity.
Fixed some issues with the sort functions in the rsyncstats script (in the support dir).
Added a way to specify daemon config lists (e.g. users, groups, etc) that contain spaces (see auth users in the latest rsyncd.conf manpage).
If a backup fails (e.g. full disk) rsync exits with an error.
Fixed a problem with a doubled --fuzzy option combined with --link-dest.
Avoid invalid output in the summary if either the start or end time had an error.
We don't allow a popt alias to affect the --daemon or --server options.
Fix daemon exclude code to disallow attribute changes in addition to disallowing transfers.
Don't force nanoseconds to match if a non-transferred, non-checksummed file only passed the quick-check w/o comparing nanoseconds.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the ability for rsync to compare nanosecond times in its file-check comparisons, and added support nanosecond times on Mac OS X.
Added a short-option (-@) for --modify-window.
Added the --checksum-choice=NAME[,NAME] option to choose the checksum algorithms.
Added hashing of xattr names (with using -X) to improve the handling of files with large numbers of xattrs.
Added a way to filter xattr names using include/exclude/filter rules (see the --xattrs option in the manpage for details).
Added daemon chroot|uid|gid to the daemon config (in addition to the old chroot|uid|gid settings that affect the daemon's transfer process).
Added syslog tag to the daemon configuration.
Some manpage improvements.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Tweak the make output when yodl isn't around to create the manpages.
Changed an obsolete autoconf compile macro.
Support newer yodl versions when converting manpages.

NEWS for rsync 3.1.2 (21 Dec 2015)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Make sure that all transferred files use only path names from inside the transfer. This makes it impossible for a malicious sender to try to make the receiver use an unsafe destination path for a transferred file, such as a just-sent symlink.

BUG FIXES:

Change the checksum seed order in the per-block checksums. This prevents someone from trying to create checksum blocks that match in sum but not content.
Fixed a with the per-dir filter files (using -FF) that could trigger an assert failure.
Only skip set_modtime() on a transferred file if the time is exactly right.
Don't create an empty backup dir for a transferred file that doesn't exist yet.
Fixed a bug where --link-dest and --xattrs could cause rsync to exit if a filename had a matching dir of the same name in the alt-dest area.
Allow more than 32 group IDs per user in the daemon's gid=LIST config.
Fix the logging of %b & %c via --log-file (daemon logging was already correct, as was --out-format='%b/%c').
Fix erroneous acceptance of --info=5 & --debug=5 (an empty flag name is not valid).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added (DRY RUN) info to the --debug=exit output line.
Use usleep() for our msleep() function if it is available.
Added a few extra long-option names to rrsync script, which will make BackupPC happier.
Made configure choose to use Linux xattrs on NetBSD (rather than not supporting xattrs).
Added -wo (write-only) option to rrsync support script.
Misc. manpage tweaks.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Fixed a bug with the Makefile's use of INSTALL_STRIP.
Improve a test in the suite that could get an erroneous timestamp error.
Tweaks for newer versions of git in the packaging tools.
Improved the m4 generation rules and some autoconf idioms.

NEWS for rsync 3.1.1 (22 Jun 2014)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

If the receiver gets bogus filenames from the sender (an unexpected leading slash or a .. infix dir), exit with an error. This prevents a malicious sender from trying to inject filenames that would affect an area outside the destination directories.
Fixed a failure to remove the partial-transfer temp file when interrupted (and rsync is not saving the partial files).
Changed the chown/group/xattr-set order to avoid losing some security- related xattr info (that would get cleared by a chown).
Fixed a bug in the xattr-finding code that could make a non-root-run receiver not able to find some xattr numbers.
Fixed a bug in the early daemon protocol where a timeout failed to be honored (e.g. if the remote side fails to send us the initial protocol greeting).
Fixed unintended inclusion of commas in file numbers in the daemon log.
We once again send the 'f' sub-flag (of -e) to the server side so it knows that we can handle incremental-recursion directory errors properly in older protocols.
Fixed an issue with too-aggressive keep-alive messages causing a problem for older rsync versions early in the transfer.
Fixed an incorrect message about backup-directory-creation when using --dry-run and the backup dir is not an absolute path.
Fixed a bug where a failed deletion and/or a failed sender-side removal would not affect the exit code.
Fixed a bug that caused a failure when combining --delete-missing-args with --xattrs and/or --acls.
Fixed a strange dir_depth assertion error that was caused by empty-dir removals and/or duplicate files in the transfer.
Fixed a problem with --info=progress2's output stats where rsync would only update the stats at the end of each file's transfer. It now uses the data that is flowing for the current file, making the stats more accurate and less jumpy.
Fixed an itemize bug that affected the combo of --link-dest, -X, and -n.
Fixed a problem with delete messages not appearing in the log file when the user didn't use --verbose.
Improve chunked xattr reading for OS X.
Removed an attempted hard-link xattr optimization that was causing a transfer failure. This removal is flagged in the compatibility code, so if a better fix can be discovered, we have a way to flip it on again.
Fixed a bug when the receiver is not configured to be able to hard link symlimks/devices/special-file items but the sender sent some of these items flagged as hard-linked.
We now generate a better error if the buffer overflows in do_mknod().
Fixed a problem reading more than 16 ACLs on some OSes.
Fixed the reading of the secrets file to avoid an infinite wait when the username is missing.
Fixed a parsing problem in the --usermap/--groupmap options when using MIN-MAX numbers.
Switched Cygwin back to using socketpair pipes to try to speed it up.
Added knowledge of a few new options to rrsync.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Tweaked the temp-file naming when --temp-dir=DIR is used: the temp-file names will not get a '.' prepended.
Added support for a new-compression idiom that does not compress all the matching data in a transfer. This can help rsync to use less cpu when a transfer has a lot of matching data, and also makes rsync compatible with a non-bundled zlib. See the --new-compress and --old-compress options in the manpage.
Added the rsync-no-vanished shell script. (See the support dir.)
Made configure more prominently mention when we failed to find yodl (in case the user wants to be able to generate manpages from *.yo files).
Have manpage mention how a daemon's max-verbosity setting affects info and debug options. Also added more clarification on backslash removals for excludes that contain wildcards.
Have configure check if for the attr lib (for getxattr) for those systems that need to link against it explicitly.
Change the early dir-creation logic to only use that idiom in an inc-recursive copy that is preserving directory times. e.g. using --omit-dir-times will avoid these early directories being created.
Fix a bug in cmp_time() that would return a wrong result if the 2 times differed by an amount greater than what a time_t can hold.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

We now include an example systemd file (in packaging/systemd).
Tweaked configure to make sure that any intended use of the included popt and/or zlib code is put early in the CFLAGS.

NEWS for rsync 3.1.0 (28 Sep 2013)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 31.

OUTPUT CHANGES:

Output numbers in 3-digit groups by default (e.g. 1,234,567). See the --human-readable option for a way to turn it off. See also the daemon's log format parameter and related command-line options (including --out-format) for a modifier that can be used to request digit-grouping or human-readable output in log escapes. (Note that log output is unchanged by default.)
The --list-only option is now affected by the --human-readable setting. It will display digit groupings by default, and unit suffixes if higher levels of readability are requested. Also, the column width for the size output has increased from 11 to 14 characters when human readability is enabled. Use --no-h to get the old-style output and column size.
The output of the --progress option has changed: the string xfer was shortened to xfr, and the string to-check was shortened to to-chk, both designed to make room for the (by default) wider display of file size numbers without making the total line-length longer. Also, when incremental recursion is enabled, the string ir-chk will be used instead of to-chk up until the incremental-recursion scan is done, letting you know that the value to check and the total value will still be increasing as new files are found.
Enhanced the --stats output: 1) to mention how many files were created (protocol >= 28), 2) to mention how many files were deleted (a new line for protocol 31, but only output when --delete is in effect), and 3) to follow the file-count, created-count, and deleted-count with a subcount list that shows the counts by type. The wording of the transferred count has also changed so that it is clearer that it is only a count of regular files.

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug in the iconv code when EINVAL or EILSEQ is returned with a full output buffer.
Fixed some rare bugs in --iconv processing that might cause a multi-byte character to get translated incorrectly.
Fixed a bogus vanished file error if some files were specified with ./ prefixes and others were not.
Fixed a bug in --sparse where an extra gap could get inserted after a partial write.
Changed the way --progress overwrites its prior output in order to make it nearly impossible for the progress to get overwritten by an error.
Improved the propagation of abnormal-exit error messages. This should help the client side to receive errors from the server when it is exiting abnormally, and should also avoid dying with an connection unexpectedly closed exit when the closed connection is really expected.
The sender now checks each file it plans to remove to ensure that it hasn't changed from the first stat's info. This helps to avoid losing file data when the user is not using the option in a safe manner.
Fixed a data-duplication bug in the compress option that made compression less efficient. This improves protocol 31 onward, while behaving in a compatible (buggy) manner with older rsync protocols.
When creating a temp-file, rsync is now a bit smarter about it dot-char choices, which can fix a problem on OS X with names that start with ...
Rsync now sets a cleanup flag for --inplace and --append transfers that will flush the write buffer if the transfer aborts. This ensures that more received data gets written out to the disk on an aborted transfer (which is quite helpful on a slow, flaky connection).
The reads that map_ptr() now does are aligned on 1K boundaries. This helps some filesystems and/or files that don't like unaligned reads.
Fix an issue in the msleep() function if time jumps backwards.
Fix daemon-server module-name splitting bug where an arg would get split even if --protect-args was used.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --remote-option=OPT (-M OPT) command-line option that is useful for things like sending a remote --log-file=FILE or --fake-super option.
Added the --info=FLAGS and --debug=FLAGS options to allow finer-grained control over what is output. Added an extra type of --progress output using --info=progress2.
The --msgs2stderr option can help with debugging rsync by allowing the debug messages to get output to stderr rather than travel via the socket protocol.
Added the --delete-missing-args and --ignore-missing-args options to either delete or ignore user-specified files on the receiver that are missing on the sender (normally the absence of user-specified files generates an error).
Added a T (terabyte) category to the --human-readable size suffixes.
Added the --usermap/--groupmap/--chown options for manipulating file ownership during the copy.
Added the %C escape to the log-output handling, which will output the MD5 checksum of any transferred file, or all files if --checksum was specified (when protocol 30 or above is in effect).
Added the reverse lookup parameter to the rsync daemon config file to allow reverse-DNS lookups to be disabled.
Added a forward-DNS lookup for the daemon's hosts allow/deny config. Can be disabled via forward lookup parameter (defaults to enabled).
Added a way for more than one group to be specified in the daemon's config file, including a way to specify that you want all of the specified user's groups without having to name them. Also changed the daemon to complain about an inability to set explicitly-specified uid/gid values, even when not run by a super-user.
The daemon now tries to send the user the error messages from the pre-xfer exec script when it fails.
Improved the use of alt-dest options into an existing hierarchy of files: If a match is found in an alt-dir, it takes precedence over an existing file. (We'll need to wait for a future version before attribute-changes on otherwise unchanged files are safe when using an existing hierarchy.)
Added per-user authorization options and group-authorization support to the daemon's auth users parameter.
Added a way to reference environment variables in a daemon's config file (using %VAR% references).
When replacing a non-dir with a symlink/hard-link/device/special-file, the update should now be done in an atomic manner.
Avoid re-sending xattr info for hard-linked files w/the same xattrs (protocol 31).
The backup code was improved to use better logic maintaining the backup directory hierarchy. Also, when a file is being backed up, rsync tries to hard-link it into place so that the upcoming replacement of the destination file will be atomic (for the normal, non-inplace logic).
Added the ability to synchronize nanosecond modified times.
Added a few more default suffixes for the dont compress settings.
Added the checking of the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS environment variable to allow the default for the --protect-args command-line option to be overridden.
Added the --preallocate command-line option.
Allow --password-file=- to read the password from stdin (filename -).
Rsync now comes packaged with an rsync-ssl helper script that can be used to contact a remote rsync daemon using a piped-stunnel command. It also includes an stunnel config file to run the server side to support ssl daemon connections. See the packaging/lsb/rsync.spec file for one way to package the resulting files. (Suggestions for how to make this even easier to install & use are welcomed.)
Improved the speed of some --inplace updates when there are lots of identical checksum blocks that end up being unusable.
Added the --outbuf=N|L|B option for choosing the output buffering.
Repeating the --fuzzy option now causes the code to look for fuzzy matches inside alt-dest directories too.
The --chmod option now supports numeric modes, e.g. --chmod=644,D755
Added some Solaris xattr code.
Made an rsync daemon (the listening process) exit with a 0 status when it was signaled to die. This helps launchd.
Improved the RSYNC_* environment variables for the pre-xfer exec script: when a daemon is sent multiple request args, they are now joined into a single return value (separated by spaces) so that the RSYNC_REQUEST environment variable is accurate for any pre-xfer exec. The values in RSYNC_ARG# vars are no longer truncated at the . arg (prior to the request dirs/files), so that all the requested values are also listed (separately) in RSYNC_ARG# variables.

EXTRAS:

Added an instant-rsyncd script to the support directory, which makes it easy to configure a simple rsync daemon in the current directory.
Added the mapfrom and mapto scripts to the support directory, which makes it easier to do user/group mapping in a local transfer based on passwd/group files from another machine.
There's a new, improved version of the lsh script in the support dir: it's written in perl and supports -u without resorting to using sudo (when run as root). The old shell version is now named lsh.sh.
There is a helper script named rsync-slash-strip in the support directory for anyone that wants to change the way rsync handles args with trailing slashes. (e.g. arg/ would get stripped to arg while arg/. would turn into arg/).

INTERNAL:

The I/O code was rewritten to be simpler and do bigger buffered reads over the socket. The I/O between the receiver and the generator was changed to be standard multiplexed-I/O (like that over the socket).
The sender tries to use any dead time while the generator is looking for files to transfer in order to do sender-side directory scanning in a more parallel manner.
A daemon can now inform a client about a daemon-configured timeout value so that the client can assist in the keep-alive activity (protocol 31).
The filter code received some refactoring to make it more extendable, to read better, and do better sanity checking.
Really big numbers are now output using our own big-num routine rather than casting them to a double and using a %.0f conversion.
The pool_alloc library has received some minor improvements in alignment handling.
Added init_stat_x() function to avoid duplication of acl/xattr init code.
The included zlib was upgraded from 1.2.3 to 1.2.8.
Rsync can now be compiled to use an unmodified zlib library instead of the tweaked one that is included with rsync. This will eventually become the default, at which point we'll start the countdown to removing the included zlib. Until then, feel free to configure using:

./configure --with-included-zlib=no

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Added more conditional debug output.
Fixed some build issues for Android and Minix.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.9 (23 Sep 2011)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fix a crash bug in checksum scanning when --inplace is used.
Fix a hang if a hard-linked file cannot be opened by the sender (e.g. if it has no read permission).
Fix preservation of a symlink's system xattrs (e.g. selinux) on Linux.
Fix a memory leak in the xattr code.
Fixed a bug with --delete-excluded when a filter merge file has a rule that specifies a receiver-only side restriction.
Fix a bug with the modifying of unwritable directories.
Fix --fake-super's interaction with --link-dest same-file comparisons.
Fix the updating of the curr_dir buffer to avoid a duplicate slash.
Fix the directory permissions on an implied dot-dir when using --relative (e.g. /outside/path/././send/path).
Fixed some too-long sleeping instances when using --bwlimit.
Fixed when symlink ownership difference-checking gets compiled into unchanged_attrs().
Improved the socket-error reporting when multiple protocols fail.
Fixed a case where a socket error could reference just-freed memory.
Failing to use a password file that was specified on the command-line is now a fatal error.
Fix the non-root updating of directories that don't have the read and/or execute permission.
Make daemon-excluded file errors more error-like.
Fix a compilation issue on older C compilers (due to a misplaced var declaration).
Make configure avoid finding socketpair on Cygwin.
Avoid trying to reference SO_BROADCAST if the OS doesn't support it.
Fix some issues with the post-processing of the manpages.
Fixed the user home-dir handling in the lsh script. (See the support dir.)
Some minor manpage improvements.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.8 (26 Mar 2011)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed two buffer-overflow issues: one where a directory path that is exactly MAXPATHLEN was not handled correctly, and one handling a --backup-dir that is extra extra large.
Fixed a data-corruption issue when preserving hard-links without preserving file ownership, and doing deletions either before or during the transfer (CVE-2011-1097). This fixes some assert errors in the hard-linking code, and some potential failed checksums (via -c) that should have matched.
Fixed a potential crash when an rsync daemon has a filter/exclude list and the transfer is using ACLs or xattrs.
Fixed a hang if a really large file is being processed by an rsync that can't handle 64-bit numbers. Rsync will now complain about the file being too big and skip it.
For devices and special files, we now avoid gathering useless ACL and/or xattr information for files that aren't being copied. (The un-copied files are still put into the file list, but there's no need to gather data that is not going to be used.) This ensures that if the user uses --no-D, that rsync can't possibly complain about being unable to gather extended information from special files that are in the file list (but not in the transfer).
Properly handle requesting remote filenames that start with a dash. This avoids a potential error where a filename could be interpreted as a (usually invalid) option.
Fixed a bug in the comparing of upper-case letters in file suffixes for --skip-compress.
If an rsync daemon has a module configured without a path setting, rsync will now disallow access to that module.
If the destination arg is an empty string, it will be treated as a reference to the current directory (as 2.x used to do).
If rsync was compiled with a newer time-setting function (such as lutimes), rsync will fall-back to an older function (such as utimes) on a system where the newer function is not around. This helps to make the rsync binary more portable in mixed-OS-release situations.
Fixed a batch-file writing bug that would not write out the full set of compatibility flags that the transfer was using. This fixes a potential protocol problem for a batch file that contains a sender-side I/O error: it would have been sent in a way that the batch-reader wasn't expecting.
Some improvements to the hard-linking code to ensure that device-number hashing is working right, and to supply more information if the hard-link code fails.
The --inplace code was improved to not search for an impossible checksum position. The quadruple-verbose chunk[N] message will now mention when an inplace chunk was handled by a seek rather than a read+write.
Improved ACL mask handling, e.g. for Solaris.
Fixed a bug that prevented --numeric-ids from disabling the translation of user/group IDs for ACLs.
Fixed an issue where an xattr and/or ACL transfer that used an alt-dest option (e.g. --link-dest) could output an error trying to itemize the changes against the alt-dest directory's xattr/ACL info but was instead trying to access the not-yet-existing new destination directory.
Improved xattr system-error messages to mention the full path to the file.
The --link-dest checking for identical symlinks now avoids considering attribute differences that cannot be changed on the receiver.
Avoid trying to read/write xattrs on certain file types for certain OSes. Improved configure to set NO_SYMLINK_XATTRS, NO_DEVICE_XATTRS, and/or NO_SPECIAL_XATTRS defines in config.h.
Improved the unsafe-symlink errors messages.
Fixed a bug setting xattrs on new files that aren't user writable.
Avoid re-setting xattrs on a hard-linked file w/the same xattrs.
Fixed a bug with --fake-super when copying files and dirs that aren't user writable.
Fixed a bug where a sparse file could have its last sparse block turned into a real block when rsync sets the file size (requires ftruncate).
If a temp-file name is too long, rsync now avoids truncating the name in the middle of adjacent high-bit characters. This prevents a potential filename error if the filesystem doesn't allow a name to contain an invalid multi-byte sequence.
If a muli-protocol socket connection fails (i.e., when contacting a daemon), we now report all the failures, not just the last one. This avoids losing a relevant error (e.g. an IPv4 connection-refused error) that happened before the final error (e.g. an IPv6 protocol-not-supported error).
Generate a transfer error if we try to call chown with a -1 for a uid or a gid (which is not settable).
Fixed the working of --force when used with --one-file-system.
Fix the popt arg parsing so that an option that doesn't take an arg will reject an attempt to supply one (can configure --with-included-popt if your system's popt library doesn't yet have this fix).
A couple minor option tweaks to the rrsync script, and also some regex changes that make vim highlighting happier. (See the support dir.)
Fixed some issues in the mnt-excl script. (See the support dir.)
Various manpage improvements.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added .hg/ to the default cvs excludes (see -C & --cvs-exclude).

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Use lchmod() whenever it is available (not just on symlinks).
A couple fixes to the socketpair_tcp() routine.
Updated the helper scripts in the packaging subdirectory.
Renamed configure.in to configure.ac.
Fixed configure's checking for iconv routines for newer OS X versions.
Fixed the testsuite/xattrs.test script on OS X.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.7 (31 Dec 2009)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bogus free when using --xattrs with --backup.
Avoid an error when --dry-run was trying to stat a prior hard-link file that hasn't really been created.
Fixed a problem with --compress (-z) where the receiving side could return the error "inflate (token) returned -5".
Fixed a bug where --delete-during could delete in a directory before it noticed that the sending side sent an I/O error for that directory (both sides of the transfer must be at least 3.0.7).
Improved --skip-compress's error handling of bad character-sets and got rid of a lingering debug fprintf().
Fixed the daemon's conveyance of io_error value from the sender.
An rsync daemon use seteuid() (when available) if it used setuid().
Get the permissions right on a --fake-super transferred directory that needs more owner permissions to emulate root behavior.
An absolute-path filter rule (i.e. with a '/' modifier) no longer loses its modifier when sending the filter rules to the remote rsync.
Improved the "--delete does not work without -r or -d" message.
Improved rsync's handling of --timeout to avoid a weird timeout case where the sender could timeout even though it has recently written data to the socket (but hasn't read data recently, due to the writing).
Some misc manpage improvements.
Fixed the chmod-temp-dir testsuite on a system without /var/tmp.
Make sure that a timeout specified in the daemon's config is used as a maximum timeout value when the user also specifies a timeout.
Improved the error-exit reporting when rsync gets an error trying to cleanup after an error: the initial error is reported.
Improved configure's detection of IPv6 for Solaris and Cygwin.
The AIX sysacls routines will now return ENOSYS if ENOTSUP is missing.
Made our (only used if missing) getaddrinfo() routine use inet_pton() (which we also provide) instead of inet_aton().
The exit-related debug messages now mention the program's role so it is clear who output what message.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Got rid of type-punned compiler warnings output by newer gcc versions.
The Makefile now ensures that proto.h will be rebuilt if config.h changes.
The testsuite no longer uses id -u, so it works better on Solaris.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.6 (8 May 2009)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a --read-batch hang when rsync is reading a batch file that was created from an incremental-recursion transfer.
Fixed the daemon's socket code to handle the simultaneous arrival of multiple connections.
Fix --safe-links/--copy-unsafe-links to properly handle symlinks that have consecutive slashes in the value.
Fixed the parsing of an [IPv6_LITERAL_ADDR] when a USER@ is prefixed.
The sender now skips a (bogus) symlink that has a 0-length value, which avoids a transfer error in the receiver.
Fixed a case where the sender could die with a tag-0 error if there was an I/O during the sending of the file list.
Fixed the rrsync script to avoid a server-side problem when -e is at the start of the short options.
Fixed a problem where a vanished directory could turn into an exit code 23 instead of the proper exit code 24.
Fixed the --iconv conversion of symlinks when doing a local copy.
Fixed a problem where --one-file-system was not stopping deletions on the receiving side when a mount-point directory did not match a directory in the transfer.
Fixed the dropping of an ACL mask when no named ACL values were present.
Fixed an ACL/xattr corruption issue where the --backup option could cause rsync to associate the wrong ACL/xattr information with received files.
Fixed the use of --xattrs with --only-write-batch.
Fixed the use of --dry-run with --read-batch.
Fixed configure's erroneous use of target.
Fixed configure's --disable-debug option.
Fixed a run-time issue for systems that can't find iconv_open() by adding the --disable-iconv-open configure option.
Complain and die if the user tries to combine --remove-source-files (or the deprecated --remove-sent-files) with --read-batch.
Fixed an failure transferring special files from Solaris to Linux.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.5 (28 Dec 2008)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Initialize xattr data in a couple spots in the hlink code, which avoids a crash when the xattr pointer's memory happens to start out non-zero. Also fixed the itemizing of an alt-dest file's xattrs when hard-linking.
Don't send a bogus - option to an older server if there were no short options specified.
Fixed skipping of unneeded updates in a batch file when incremental recursion is active. Added a test for this. Made batch-mode handle redo files properly (and without hanging).
Fix the %P logfile escape when the daemon logs from inside a chroot.
Fixed the use of -s (--protect-args) when used with a remote source or destination that had an empty path (e.g. host:). Also fixed a problem when -s was used when accessing a daemon via a remote-shell.
Fixed the use of a dot-dir path (e.g. foo/./bar) inside a --files-from file when the root of the transfer isn't the current directory.
Fixed a bug with -K --delete removing symlinks to directories when incremental recursion is active.
Fixed a hard to trigger hang when using --remove-source-files.
Got rid of an annoying delay when accessing a daemon via a remote-shell.
Properly ignore (superfluous) source args on a --read-batch command.
Improved the manpage's description of the * wildcard to remove the confusing non-empty qualifier.
Fixed reverse lookups in the compatibility-library version of getnameinfo().
Fixed a bug when using --sparse on a sparse file that has over 2GB of consecutive sparse data.
Avoid a hang when using at least 3 --verbose options on a transfer with a client sender (which includes local copying).
Fixed a problem with --delete-delay reporting an error when it was ready to remove a directory that was now gone.
Got rid of a bunch of warn_unused_result compiler warnings.
If an ftruncate() on a received file fails, it now causes a partial- transfer warning.
Allow a path with a leading // to be preserved (CYGWIN only).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Made the atomic-rsync script able to perform a fully atomic update of the copied hierarchy when the destination is setup using a particular symlink idiom. (See the support dir.)

NEWS for rsync 3.0.4 (6 Sep 2008)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug in the hard-linking code where it would sometimes try to allocate 0 bytes of memory (which fails on some OSes, such as AIX).
Fixed the hard-linking of files from a device that has a device number of 0 (which seems to be a common device number on NetBSD).
Fixed the handling of a --partial-dir that cannot be created. This particularly impacts the --delay-updates option (since the files cannot be delayed without a partial-dir), and was potentially destructive if the --remove-source-files was also specified.
Fixed a couple issues in the --fake-super handling of xattrs when the destination files have root-level attributes (e.g. selinux values) that a non-root copy can't affect.
Improved the keep-alive check in the generator to fire consistently in incremental-recursion mode when --timeout is enabled.
The --iconv option now converts the content of a symlink too, instead of leaving it in the wrong character-set (requires 3.0.4 on both sides of the transfer).
When using --iconv, if a filename fails to convert on the receiving side, this no longer makes deletions in the root-dir of the transfer fail silently (the user now gets a warning about deletions being disabled due to IO error as long as --ignore-errors was not specified).
When using --iconv, if a server-side receiver can't convert a filename, the error message sent back to the client no longer mangles the name with the wrong charset conversion.
Fixed a potential alignment issue in the IRIX ACL code when allocating the initial struct acl object. Also, cast mallocs to avoid warnings.
Changed some errors that were going to stdout to go to stderr.
Made human_num() and human_dnum() able to output a negative number (rather than outputting a cryptic string of punctuation).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Rsync will avoid sending an -e option to the server if an older protocol is requested (and thus the option would not be useful). This lets the user specify the --protocol=29 option to access an overly-restrictive server that is rejecting the protocol-30 use of -e to the server.
Improved the message output for an RERR_PARTIAL exit.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The Makefile will not halt for just a timestamp change on the Makefile or the configure files, only for actual changes in content.
Changed some commands in the testsuite's xattrs.test that called rsync instead of $RSYNC.
Enhanced the release scripts to be able to handle a branch release and to do even more consistency checks on the files.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.3 (29 Jun 2008)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a wildcard matching problem in the daemon when a module has use chroot enabled.
Fixed a crash bug in the hard-link code.
Fixed the sending of xattr directory information when the code finds a --link-dest or --copy-dest directory with unchanged xattrs -- the destination directory now gets these unchanged xattrs properly applied.
Fixed an xattr-sending glitch that could cause an Internal abbrev error.
Fixed the combination of --xattrs and --backup.
The generator no longer allows a '.' dir to be excluded by a daemon-exclude rule.
Fixed deletion handling when copying a single, empty directory (with no files) to a differently named, non-existent directory.
Fixed the conversion of spaces into dashes in the %M log escape.
Fixed several places in the code that were not returning the right errno when a function failed.
Fixed the backing up of a device or special file into a backup dir.
Moved the setting of the socket options prior to the connect().
If rsync exits in the middle of a --progress output, it now outputs a newline to help prevent the progress line from being overwritten.
Fixed a problem with how a destination path with a trailing slash or a trailing dot-dir was compared against the daemon excludes.
Fixed the sending of large (size > 16GB) files when talking to an older rsync (protocols < 30): we now use a compatible block size limit.
If a file's length is so huge that we overflow a checksum buffer count (i.e. several hundred TB), warn the user and avoid sending an invalid checksum struct over the wire.
If a source arg is excluded, --relative no longer adds the excluded arg's implied dirs to the transfer. This fix also made the exclude check happen in the better place in the sending code.
Use the overflow_exit() function for overflows, not out_of_memory().
Improved the code to better handle a system that has only 32-bit file offsets.

ENHANCEMENTS:

The rsyncd.conf manpage now consistently refers to the parameters in the daemon config file as parameters.
The description of the --inplace option was improved.

EXTRAS:

Added a new script in the support directory, deny-rsync, which allows an admin to (temporarily) replace the rsync command with a script that sends an error message to the remote client via the rsync protocol.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Fixed a testcase failure if the tests are run as root and made some compatibility improvements.
Improved the daemon tests, including checking module comments, the listing of files, and the ensuring that daemon excludes can't affect a dot-dir arg.
Improved some build rules for those that build in a separate directory from the source, including better install rules for the manpages, and the fixing of a proto.h-tstamp rule that could make the binaries get rebuild without cause.
Improved the testsuite to work around a problem with some utilities (e.g. cp -p & touch -r) rounding sub-second timestamps.
Ensure that the early patches don't cause any generated-file hunks to bleed-over into patches that follow.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.2 (8 Apr 2008)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a potential buffer overflow in the xattr code.

ENHANCEMENTS:

None.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The RPM spec file was improved to install more useful files.
A few developer-oriented scripts were moved from the support dir to the packaging dir.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.1 (3 Apr 2008)

Changes in this version:

NOTABLE CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR:

Added the 'c'-flag to the itemizing of non-regular files so that the itemized output doesn't get hidden if there were no attribute changes, and also so that the itemizing of a --copy-links run will distinguish between copying an identical non-regular file and the creation of a revised version with a new value (e.g. a changed symlink referent, a new device number, etc.).

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a crash bug when a single-use rsync daemon (via remote shell) was run without specifying a --config=FILE option.
Fixed a crash when backing up a directory that has a default ACL.
Fixed a bug in the handling of xattr values that could cause rsync to not think that a file's extended attributes are up-to-date.
Fixed the working of --fake-super with --link-dest and --xattrs.
Fixed a hang when combining --dry-run with --remove-source-files.
Fixed a bug with --iconv's handling of files that cannot be converted: a failed name can no longer cause a transfer failure.
Fixed the building of the rounding.h file on systems that need custom CPPFLAGS to be used. Also improved the error reporting if the building of rounding.h fails.
Fixed the use of the --protect-args (-s) option when talking to a daemon.
Fixed the --ignore-existing option's protection of files on the receiver that are non-regular files on the sender (e.g. if a symlink or a dir on the sender is trying to replace a file on the receiver). The reverse protection (protecting a dir/symlink/device from being replaced by a file) was already working.
Fixed an assert failure if --hard-links is combined with an option that can skip a file in a set of hard-linked files (i.e. --ignore-existing, --append, etc.), without skipping all the files in the set.
Avoid setting the modify time on a directory that already has the right modify time set. This avoids tweaking the dir's ctime.
Improved the daemon-exclude handling to do a better job of applying the exclude rules to path entries. It also sends the user an error just as if the files were actually missing (instead of silently ignoring the user's args), and avoids sending the user the filter-action messages for these non-user-initiated rules.
Fixed some glitches with the dry-run code's missing-directory handling, including a problem when combined with --fuzzy.
Fixed some glitches with the skipped-directory handling.
Fixed the 'T'-flag itemizing of symlinks when --time isn't preserved.
Fixed a glitch in the itemizing of permissions with the -E option.
The --append option's restricting of transfers to those that add data no longer prevents the updating of non-content changes to otherwise up-to-date files (i.e. those with the same content but differing permissions, ownership, xattrs, etc.).
Don't allow --fake-super to be specified with -XX (double --xattrs) because the options conflict. If a daemon has fake super enabled, it automatically downgrades a -XX request to -X.
Fixed a couple bugs in the parsing of daemon-config excludes that could make a floating exclude rule get treated as matching an absolute path.
A daemon doesn't try to auto-refuse the iconv option if iconv-support wasn't compiled in to the daemon (avoiding a warning in the logs).
Fixed the inclusion of per-dir merge files from implied dirs.
Fixed the rrsync script to work with the latest options that rsync sends, including its flag-specifying use of -e to the server. (See the support dir.)

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --old-dirs (--old-d) option to make it easier for a user to ask for file-listings with older rsync versions (this is easier than having to type -r --exclude='/*/*' manually).
When getting an error while asking an older rsync daemon for a file listing, rsync will try to notice if the error is a rejection of the --dirs (-d) option and let the user know how to work around the issue.
Added a few more --no-OPTION overrides.
Improved the documentation of the --append option.
Improved the documentation of the filter/exclude/include daemon parameters.

INTERNAL:

Fixed a couple minor bugs in the included popt library (ones which I sent to the official popt project for inclusion in the 1.14 release).
Fixed a stat() call that should have been do_stat() so that the proper normal/64-bit stat() function gets called. (Was in an area that should not have caused problems, though.)
Changed the file-glob code to do a directory scan without using the glob and glob.h. This lets us do the globbing with less memory churn, and also avoid adding daemon-excluded items to the returned args.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The configure script tries to get the user's compiler to not warn about unused function parameters if the build is not including one or more of the ACL/xattrs/iconv features.
The configure script now has better checks for figuring out if the included popt code should be used or not.
Fixed two testsuite glitches: avoid a failure if someone's cd command outputs the current directory when cd-ing to a relative path, and made the itemized test query how rsync was built to determine if it should expect hard-linked symlinks or not.
Updated the testsuite to verify that various bug fixes remain fixed.
The RPM spec file was updated to have: (1) comments for how to use the rsync-patch tar file, and (2) an /etc/xinetd.d/rsync file.
Updated the build scripts to work with a revised FTP directory structure.

NEWS for rsync 3.0.0 (1 Mar 2008)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 30.

NOTABLE CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR:

The handling of implied directories when using --relative has changed to send them as directories (e.g. no implied dir is ever sent as a symlink). This avoids unexpected behavior and should not adversely affect most people. If you're one of those rare individuals who relied upon having an implied dir be duplicated as a symlink, you should specify the transfer of the symlink and the transfer of the referent directory as separate args. (See also --keep-dirlinks and --no-implied-dirs.) Also, exclude rules no longer have a partial effect on implied dirs.
Requesting a remote file-listing without specifying -r (--recursive) now sends the -d (--dirs) option to the remote rsync rather than sending -r along with an extra exclude of /*/*. If the remote rsync does not understand the -d option (i.e. it is 2.6.3 or older), you will need to either turn off -d (--no-d), or specify -r --exclude='/*/*' manually.
In --dry-run mode, the last line of the verbose summary text is output with a "(DRY RUN)" suffix to help remind you that no updates were made. Similarly, --only-write-batch outputs (BATCH ONLY).
A writable rsync daemon with use chroot disabled now defaults to a symlink-munging behavior designed to make symlinks safer while also allowing absolute symlinks to be stored and retrieved. This also has the effect of making symlinks unusable while they're in the daemon's hierarchy. See the daemon's munge symlinks parameter for details.
Starting up an extra copy of an rsync daemon will not clobber the pidfile for the running daemon -- if the pidfile exists, the new daemon will exit with an error. This means that your wrapper script that starts the rsync daemon should be made to handle lock-breaking (if you want any automatic breaking of locks to be done).

BUG FIXES:

A daemon with use chroot = no and excluded items listed in the daemon config file now properly checks an absolute-path arg specified for these options: --compare-dest, --link-dest, --copy-dest, --partial-dir, --backup-dir, --temp-dir, and --files-from.
A daemon can now be told to disable all user- and group-name translation on a per-module basis. This avoids a potential problem with a writable daemon module that has use chroot enabled -- if precautions weren't taken, a user could try to add a missing library and get rsync to use it. This makes rsync safer by default, and more configurable when id-translation is not desired. See the daemon's numeric ids parameter for full details.
A chroot daemon can now indicate which part of its path should affect the chroot call, and which part should become an inside-chroot path for the module. This allows you to have outside-the-transfer paths (such as for libraries) even when you enable chroot protection. The idiom used in the rsyncd.conf file is: path = /chroot/dirs/./dirs/inside
If a file's data arrived successfully on the receiving side but the rename of the temporary file to the destination file failed AND the --remove-source-files (or the deprecated --remove-sent-files) option was specified, rsync no longer erroneously removes the associated source file.
Fixed the output of -ii when combined with one of the --*-dest options: it now itemizes all the items, not just the changed ones.
Made the output of all file types consistent when using a --*-dest option. Prior versions would output too many creation events for matching items.
The code that waits for a child pid now handles being interrupted by a signal. This fixes a problem with the pre-xfer exec function not being able to get the exit status from the script.
A negated filter rule (i.e. with a '!' modifier) no longer loses the negation when sending the filter rules to the remote rsync.
Fixed a problem with the --out-format (aka --log-format) option %f: it no longer outputs superfluous directory info for a non-daemon rsync.
Fixed a problem with -vv (double --verbose) and --stats when pushing files (which includes local copies). Version 2.6.9 would complete the copy, but exit with an error when the receiver output its memory stats.
If --password-file is used on a non-daemon transfer, rsync now complains and exits. This should help users figure out that they can't use this option to control a remote shell's password prompt.
Make sure that directory permissions of a newly-created destination directory are handled right when --perms is left off.
The itemized output of a newly-created destination directory is now output as a creation event, not a change event.
Improved --hard-link so that more corner cases are handled correctly when combined with options such as --link-dest and/or --ignore-existing.
The --append option no longer updates a file that has the same size.
Fixed a bug when combining --backup and --backup-dir with --inplace: any missing backup directories are now created.
Fixed a bug when using --backup and --inplace with --whole-file or --read-batch: backup files are actually created now.
The daemon pidfile is checked and created sooner in the startup sequence.
If a daemon module's path value is not an absolute pathname, the code now makes it absolute internally (making it work properly).
Ensure that a temporary file always has owner-write permission while we are writing to it. This avoids problems with some network filesystems when transferring read-only files.
Any errors output about password-file reading no longer cause an error at the end of the run about a partial transfer.
The --read-batch option for protocol 30 now ensures that several more options are set correctly for the current batch file: --iconv, --acls, --xattrs, --inplace, --append, and --append-verify.
Using --only-write-batch to a daemon receiver now works properly (older versions would update some files while writing the batch).
Avoid outputting a "file has vanished" message when the file is a broken symlink and --copy-unsafe-links or --copy-dirlinks is used (the code already handled this for --copy-links).
Fixed the combination of --only-write-batch and --dry-run.
Fixed rsync's ability to remove files that are not writable by the file's owner when rsync is running as the same user.
When transferring large files, the sender's hashtable of checksums is kept at a more reasonable state of fullness (no more than 80% full) so that the scanning of the hashtable will not bog down as the number of blocks increases.

ENHANCEMENTS:

A new incremental-recursion algorithm is now used when rsync is talking to another 3.x version. This starts the transfer going more quickly (before all the files have been found), and requires much less memory. See the --recursive option in the manpage for some restrictions.
Lowered memory use in the non-incremental-recursion algorithm for typical option values (usually saving from 21-29 bytes per file).
The default --delete algorithm is now --delete-during when talking to a 3.x rsync. This is a faster scan than using --delete-before (which is the default when talking to older rsync versions), and is compatible with the new incremental recursion mode.
Rsync now allows multiple remote-source args to be specified rather than having to rely on a special space-splitting side-effect of the remote- shell. Additional remote args must specify the same host or an empty one (e.g. empty: :file1 or ::module/file2). For example, this means that local use of brace expansion now works: rsync -av host:dir/{f1,f2} .
Added the --protect-args (-s) option, that tells rsync to send most of the command-line args at the start of the transfer rather than as args to the remote-shell command. This protects them from space-splitting, and only interprets basic wildcard special shell characters (*?[).
Added the --delete-delay option, which is a more efficient way to delete files at the end of the transfer without needing a separate delete pass.
Added the --acls (-A) option to preserve Access Control Lists. This is an improved version of the prior patch that was available, and it even supports OS X ACLs. If you need to have backward compatibility with old, ACL-patched versions of rsync, apply the acls.diff file from the patches dir.
Added the --xattrs (-X) option to preserve extended attributes. This is an improved version of the prior patch that was available, and it even supports OS X xattrs (which includes their resource fork data). If you need to have backward compatibility with old, xattr-patched versions of rsync, apply the xattrs.diff file from the patches dir.
Added the --fake-super option that allows a non-super user to preserve all attributes of a file by using a special extended-attribute idiom. It even supports the storing of foreign ACL data on your backup server. There is also an analogous fake super parameter for an rsync daemon.
Added the --iconv option, which allows rsync to convert filenames from one character-set to another during the transfer. The default is to make this feature available as long as your system has iconv_open(). If compilation fails, specify --disable-iconv to configure, and then rebuild. If you want rsync to perform character-set conversions by default, you can specify --enable-iconv=CONVERT_STRING with the default value for the --iconv option that you wish to use. For example, --enable-iconv=. is a good choice. See the rsync manpage for an explanation of the --iconv option's settings.
A new daemon config parameter, charset, lets you control the character- set that is used during an --iconv transfer to/from a daemon module. You can also set your daemon to refuse no-iconv if you want to force the client to use an --iconv transfer (requiring an rsync 3.x client).
Added the --skip-compress=LIST option to override the default list of file suffixes that will not be compressed when using --compress (-z).
The daemon's default for dont compress was extended to include: *.7z *.mp[34] *.mov *.avi *.ogg *.jpg *.jpeg and the name-matching routine was also optimized to run more quickly.
The --max-delete option now outputs a warning if it skipped any file deletions, including a count of how many deletions were skipped. (Older versions just silently stopped deleting things.)
You may specify --max-delete=0 to a 3.0.0 client to request that it warn about extraneous files without deleting anything. If you're not sure what version the client is, you can use the less-obvious --max-delete=-1, as both old and new versions will treat that as the same request (though older versions don't warn).
The --hard-link option now uses less memory on both the sending and receiving side for all protocol versions. For protocol 30, the use of a hashtable on the sending side allows us to more efficiently convey to the receiver what files are linked together. This reduces the amount of data sent over the socket by a considerable margin (rather than adding more data), and limits the in-memory storage of the device+inode information to just the sending side for the new protocol 30, or to the receiving side when speaking an older protocol (note that older rsync versions kept the device+inode information on both sides).
The filter rules now support a perishable (p) modifier that marks rules that should not have an effect in a directory that is being deleted. e.g. -f '-p .svn/' would only affect live .svn directories.
Rsync checks all the alternate-destination args for validity (e.g. --link-dest). This lets the user know when they specified a directory that does not exist.
If we get an ENOSYS error setting the time on a symlink, we don't complain about it anymore (for those systems that even support the setting of the modify-time on a symlink).
Protocol 30 now uses MD5 checksums instead of MD4.
Changed the --append option to not checksum the existing data in the destination file, which speeds up file appending.
Added the --append-verify option, which works like the older --append option (verifying the existing data in the destination file). For compatibility with older rsync versions, any use of --append that is talking protocol 29 or older will revert to the --append-verify method.
Added the --contimeout=SECONDS option that lets the user specify a connection timeout for rsync daemon access.
Documented and extended the support for the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG variable that can be used to enhance the client side of a daemon connection.
Improved the dashes and double-quotes in the nroff manpage output.
Rsync now supports a lot more --no-OPTION override options.

INTERNAL:

The file-list sorting algorithm now uses a sort that keeps any same-named items in the same order as they were specified. This allows rsync to always ensure that the first of the duplicates is the one that will be included in the copy. The new sort is also faster than the glibc version of qsort() and mergesort().
Rsync now supports the transfer of 64-bit timestamps (time_t values).
Made the file-deletion code use a little less stack when recursing through a directory hierarchy of extraneous files.
Fixed a build problem with older (2.x) versions of gcc.
Added some isType() functions that make dealing with signed characters easier without forcing variables via casts.
Changed strcat/strcpy/sprintf function calls to use safer versions.
Upgraded the included popt version to 1.10.2 and improved its use of string-handling functions.
Added missing prototypes for compatibility functions from the lib dir.
Configure determines if iconv() has a const arg, allowing us to avoid a compiler warning.
Made the sending of some numbers more efficient for protocol 30.
Make sure that a daemon process doesn't mind if the client was weird and omitted the --server option.
There are more internal logging categories available in protocol 30 than the age-old FINFO and FERROR, including FERROR_XFER and FWARN. These new categories allow some errors and warnings to go to stderr without causing an erroneous end-of-run warning about some files not being able to be transferred.
Improved the use of const on pointers.
Improved J.W.'s pool_alloc routines to add a way of incrementally freeing older sections of a pool's memory.
The getaddrinfo.c compatibility code in the lib dir was replaced with some new code (derived from samba, derived from PostgreSQL) that has a better license than the old code.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Rsync is now licensed under the GPLv3 or later.
Rsync is now being maintained in a git repository instead of CVS (though the old CVS repository still exists for historical access). Several maintenance scripts were updated to work with git.
Generated files are no longer committed into the source repository. The autoconf and autoheader commands are now automatically run during the normal use of configure and make. The latest dev versions of all generated files can also be copied from the samba.org web site (see the prepare-source script's fetch option).
The patches directory of diff files is now built from branches in the rsync git repository (branch patch/FOO creates file patches/FOO.diff). This directory is now distributed in a separate separate tar file named rsync-patches-VERSION.tar.gz instead of the main rsync-VERSION.tar.gz.
The proto.h file is now built using a simple perl script rather than a complex awk script, which proved to be more widely compatible.
When running the tests, we now put our per-test temp dirs into a sub- directory named testtmp (which is created, if missing). This allows someone to symlink the testtmp directory to another filesystem (which is useful if the build dir's filesystem does not support ACLs and xattrs, but another filesystem does).
Rsync now has a way of handling protocol-version changes during the development of a new protocol version. This causes any out-of-sync versions to speak an older protocol rather than fail in a cryptic manner. This addition makes it safer to deploy a pre-release version that may interact with the public. This new exchange of sub-version info does not interfere with the {MIN,MAX}_PROTOCOL_VERSION checking algorithm (which does not have enough range to allow the main protocol number to be incremented for every minor tweak in that happens during development).
The csprotocol.txt file was updated to mention the daemon protocol change in the 3.0.0 release.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.9 (6 Nov 2006)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

If rsync is interrupted via a handled signal (such as SIGINT), it will once again clean-up its temp file from the destination dir.
Fixed an overzealous sanitizing bug in the handling of the --link-dest, --copy-dest, and --compare-dest options to a daemon without chroot: if the copy's destination dir is deeper than the top of the module's path, these options now accept a safe number of parent-dir (../) references (since these options are relative to the destination dir). The old code incorrectly chopped off all ../ prefixes for these options, no matter how deep the destination directory was in the module's hierarchy.
Fixed a bug where a deferred info/error/log message could get sent directly to the sender instead of being handled by rwrite() in the generator. This fixes an unexpected tag 3 fatal error, and should also fix a potential problem where a deferred info/error message from the receiver might bypass the log file and get sent only to the client process. (These problems could only affect an rsync daemon that was receiving files.)
Fixed a bug when --inplace was combined with a --*-dest option and we update a file's data using an alternate basis file. The code now notices that it needs to copy the matching data from the basis file instead of (wrongly) assuming that it was already present in the file.
Fixed a bug where using --dry-run with a --*-dest option with a path relative to a directory that does not yet exist: the affected option gets its proper path value so that the output of the dry-run is right.
Fixed a bug in the %f logfile escape when receiving files: the destination path is now included in the output (e.g. you can now tell when a user specifies a subdir inside a module).
If the receiving side fails to create a directory, it will now skip trying to update everything that is inside that directory.
If --link-dest is specified with --checksum but without --times, rsync will now allow a hard-link to be created to a matching link-dest file even when the file's modify-time doesn't match the server's file.
The daemon now calls more timezone-using functions prior to doing a chroot. This should help some C libraries to generate proper timestamps from inside a chrooted daemon (and to not try to access /etc/timezone over and over again).
Fixed a bug in the handling of an absolute --partial-dir=ABS_PATH option: it now deletes an alternate basis file from the partial-dir that was used to successfully update a destination file.
Fixed a bug in the handling of --delete-excluded when using a per-dir merge file: the merge file is now honored on the receiving side, and only its unqualified include/exclude commands are ignored (just as is done for global include/excludes).
Fixed a recent bug where --delete was not working when transferring from the root (/) of the filesystem with --relative enabled.
Fixed a recent bug where an --exclude='*' could affect the root (/) of the filesystem with --relative enabled.
When --inplace creates a file, it is now created with owner read/write permissions (0600) instead of no permissions at all. This avoids a problem continuing a transfer that was interrupted (since --inplace will not update a file that has no write permissions).
If either --remove-source-files or --remove-sent-files is enabled and we are unable to remove the source file, rsync now outputs an error.
Fixed a bug in the daemon's incoming chmod rule: newly-created directories no longer get the 'F' (file) rules applied to them.
Fixed an infinite loop bug when a filter rule was rejected due to being overly long.
When the server receives a --partial-dir option from the client, it no longer runs the client-side code that adds an assumed filter rule (since the client will be sending us the rules in the usual manner, and they may have chosen to override the auto-added rule).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --log-file=FILE and --log-file-format=FORMAT options. These can be used to tell any rsync to output what it is doing to a log file. They work with a client rsync, a non-daemon server rsync (see the manpage for instructions), and also allows the overriding of rsyncd.conf settings when starting a daemon.
The --log-format option was renamed to be --out-format to avoid confusing it with affecting the log-file output. (The old option remains as an alias for the new to preserve backward compatibility.)
Made log file and syslog facility settable on a per-module basis in the daemon's config file.
Added the --remove-source-files option as a replacement for the (now deprecated) --remove-sent-files option. This new option removes all non-dirs from the source directories, even if the file was already up-to-date. This fixes a problem where interrupting an rsync that was using --remove-sent-files and restarting it could leave behind a file that the earlier rsync synchronized, but didn't get to remove. (The deprecated --remove-sent-files is still understood for now, and still behaves in the same way as before.)
Added the option --no-motd to suppress the message-of-the-day output from a daemon when doing a copy. (See the manpage for a caveat.)
Added a new environment variable to the pre-/post-xfer exec commands (in the daemon's config file): RSYNC_PID. This value will be the same in both the pre- and post-xfer commands, so it can be used as a unique ID if the pre-xfer command wants to cache some arg/request info for the post-xfer command.

INTERNAL:

Did a code audit using IBM's code-checker program and made several changes, including: replacing most of the strcpy() and sprintf() calls with strlcpy(), snprintf(), and memcpy(), adding a 0-value to an enum that had been intermingling a literal 0 with the defined enum values, silencing some uninitialized memory checks, marking some functions with a noreturn attribute, and changing an if that could never succeed on some platforms into a pre-processor directive that conditionally compiles the code.
Fixed a potential bug in f_name_cmp() when both the args are a top-level . dir (which doesn't happen in normal operations).
Changed exit_cleanup() so that it can never return instead of exit. The old code might return if it found the exit_cleanup() function was being called recursively. The new code is segmented so that any recursive calls move on to the next step of the exit-processing.
The macro WIFEXITED(stat) will now be defined if the OS didn't already define it.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The acls.diff and xattrs.diff patches have received a bunch of work to make them much closer to being acceptable in the main distribution. The xattrs patch also has some preliminary Mac OS X and FreeBSD compatibility code that various system types to exchange extended file-attributes.
A new diff in the patches dir, fake-root.diff, allows rsync to maintain a backup hierarchy with full owner, group, and device info without actually running as root. It does this using a special extended attribute, so it depends on xattrs.diff (which depends on acls.diff).
The rsync.yo and rsyncd.conf.yo files have been updated to work better with the latest yodl 2.x releases.
Updated config.guess and config.sub to their 2006-07-02 versions.
Updated various files to include the latest FSF address and to have consistent opening comments.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.8 (22 Apr 2006)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a bug in the exclude code where an anchored exclude without any wildcards fails to match an absolute source arg, but only when --relative is in effect.
Improved the I/O code for the generator to fix a potential hang when the receiver gets an EOF on the socket but the generator's select() call never indicates that the socket is writable for it to be notified about the EOF. (This can happen when using stunnel).
Fixed a problem with the file-reading code where a failed read (such as that caused by a bad sector) would not advance the file's read-position beyond the failed read's data.
Fixed a logging bug where the log file directive was not being honored in a single-use daemon (one spawned by a remote-shell connection or by init).
If rsync cannot honor the --delete option, we output an error and exit instead of silently ignoring the option.
Fixed a bug in the --link-dest code that prevented special files (such as fifos) from being linked.
The ability to hard-link symlinks and special files is now determined at configure time instead of at runtime. This fixes a bug with --link-dest creating a hard-link to a symlink's referent on a BSD system.

ENHANCEMENTS:

In daemon mode, if rsync fails to bind to the requested port, the error(s) returned by socket() and/or bind() are now logged.
When we output a fatal error, we now output the version of rsync in the message.
Improved the documentation for the --owner and --group options.
The rsyncstats script in support has an improved line-parsing regex that is easier to read and also makes it to parse syslog-generated lines.
A new script in support: file-attr-restore, can be used to restore the attributes of a file-set (the permissions, ownership, and group info) taken from the cached output of a find ARG... -ls command.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Removed the unused function write_int_named(), the unused variable io_read_phase, and the rarely used variable io_write_phase. This also elides the confusing 'phase "unknown"' part of one error message.
Removed two unused configure checks and two related (also unused) compatibility functions.
The xattrs.diff patch received a security fix that prevents a potential buffer overflow in the receive_xattr() code.
The acls.diff patch has been improved quite a bit, with more to come.
A new patch was added: log-file.diff. This contains an early version of a future option, --log-file=FILE, that will allow any rsync to log its actions to a file (something that only a daemon supports at present).

NEWS for rsync 2.6.7 (11 Mar 2006)

Changes in this version:

OUTPUT CHANGES:

The letter 'D' in the itemized output was being used for both devices (character or block) as well as other special files (such as fifos and named sockets). This has changed to separate non-device special files under the 'S' designation (e.g. cS+++++++ path/fifo). See also the --specials option, below.
The way rsync escapes unreadable characters has changed. First, rsync now has support for recognizing valid multi-byte character sequences in your current locale, allowing it to escape fewer characters than before for a locale such as UTF-8. Second, it now uses an escape idiom of \#123, which is the literal string \# followed by exactly 3 octal digits. Rsync no longer doubles a backslash character in a filename (e.g. it used to output foo\\bar when copying foo\bar) -- now it only escapes a backslash that is followed by a hash-sign and 3 digits (0-9) (e.g. it will output foo\#134#789 when copying foo\#789). See also the --8-bit-output (-8) option, mentioned below.

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

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a really old bug that caused --checksum (-c) to checksum all the files encountered during the delete scan (ouch).
Fixed a potential hang in a remote generator: when the receiver gets a read-error on the socket, it now signals the generator about this so that the generator does not try to send any of the terminating error messages to the client (avoiding a potential hang in some setups).
Made hard-links work with symlinks and devices again.
If the sender gets an early EOF reading a source file, we propagate this error to the receiver so that it can discard the file and try requesting it again (which is the existing behavior for other kinds of read errors).
If a device-file/special-file changes permissions, rsync now updates the permissions without recreating the file.
If the user specifies a remote-host for both the source and destination, we now output a syntax error rather than trying to open the destination hostspec as a filename.
When --inplace creates a new destination file, rsync now creates it with permissions 0600 instead of 0000 -- this makes restarting possible when the transfer gets interrupted in the middle of sending a new file.
Reject the combination of --inplace and --sparse since the sparse-output algorithm doesn't work when overwriting existing data.
Fixed the directory name in the error that is output when pop_dir() fails.
Really fixed the parsing of a ! entry in .cvsignore files this time.
If the generator gets a stat() error on a file, output it (this used to require at least -vv for the error to be seen).
If waitpid() fails or the child rsync didn't exit cleanly, we now handle the exit status properly and generate a better error.
Fixed some glitches in the double-verbose output when using --copy-dest, --link-dest, or --compare-dest. Also improved how the verbose output handles hard-links (within the transfer) that had an up-to-date alternate dest file, and copied files (via --copy-dest).
Fixed the matching of the dont-compress items (e.g. *.gz) against files that have a path component containing a slash.
If the code reading a filter/exclude file gets an EINTR error, rsync now clears the error flag on the file handle so it can keep on reading.
If --relative is active, the sending side cleans up trailing / or /. suffixes to avoid triggering a bug in older rsync versions. Also, we now reject a .. dir if it would be sent as a relative dir.
If a non-directory is in the way of a directory and rsync is run with --dry-run and --delete, rsync no longer complains about not being able to opendir() the not-yet present directory.
When --list-only is used and a non-existent local destination dir was also specified as a destination, rsync no longer generates a warning about being unable to create the missing directory.
Fixed some problems with --relative --no-implied-dirs when the destination directory did not yet exist: we can now create a symlink or device when it is the first thing in the missing dir, and --fuzzy no longer complains about being unable to open the missing dir.
Fixed a bug where the --copy-links option would not affect implied directories without --copy-unsafe-links (see --relative).
Got rid of the need for --force to be used in some circumstances with --delete-after (making it consistent with --delete-before/--delete-during).
Rsync now ignores the SIGXFSZ signal, just in case your OS sends this when a file is too large (rsync handles the write error).
Fixed a bug in the Proxy-Authorization header's base64-encoded value: it was not properly padded with trailing '=' chars. This only affects a user that need to use a password-authenticated proxy for an outgoing daemon-rsync connection.
If we're transferring an empty directory to a new name, rsync no longer forces S_IWUSR if it wasn't already set, nor does it accidentally leave it set.
Fixed a bug in the debug output (-vvvvv) that could mention the wrong checksum for the current file offset.
Rsync no longer allows a single directory to be copied over a non-directory destination arg.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --append option that makes rsync append data onto files that are longer on the source than the destination (this includes new files).
Added the --min-size=SIZE option to exclude small files from the transfer.
Added the --compress-level option to allow you to set how aggressive rsync's compression should be (this option implies --compress).
Enhanced the parsing of the SIZE value for --min-size and --max-size to allow easy entry of multiples of 1000 (instead of just multiples of 1024) and off-by-one values too (e.g. --max-size=8mb-1).
Added the --8-bit-output (-8) option, which tells rsync to avoid escaping high-bit characters that it thinks are unreadable in the current locale.
The new option --human-readable (-h) changes the output of --progress, --stats, and the end-of-run summary to be easier to read. If repeated, the units become powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000. (The old meaning of -h, as a shorthand for --help, still works as long as you just use it on its own, as in rsync -h.)
If lutimes() and/or lchmod() are around, use them to allow the preservation of attributes on symlinks.
The --link-dest option now affects symlinks and devices (when possible).
Added two config items to the rsyncd.conf parsing: pre-xfer exec and post-xfer exec. These allow a command to be specified on a per-module basis that will be run before and/or after a daemon-mode transfer. (See the manpage for a list of the environment variables that are set with information about the transfer.)
When using the --relative option, you can now insert a dot dir in the source path to indicate where the replication of the source dirs should start. For example, if you specify a source path of rsync://host/module/foo/bar/./baz/dir with -R, rsync will now only replicate the baz/dir part of the source path (note: a trailing dot dir is unaffected unless it also has a trailing slash).
Added some new --no-FOO options that make it easier to override unwanted implied or default options. For example, -a --no-o (aka --archive --no-owner) can be used to turn off the preservation of file ownership that is implied by -a.
Added the --chmod=MODE option that allows the destination permissions to be changed from the source permissions. E.g. --chmod=g+w,o-rwx
Added the incoming chmod and outgoing chmod daemon options that allow a module to specify what permissions changes should be applied to all files copied to and from the daemon.
Allow the --temp-dir option to be specified when starting a daemon, which sets the default temporary directory for incoming files.
If --delete is combined with --dirs without --recursive, rsync will now delete in any directory whose content is being synchronized.
If --backup is combined with --delete without --backup-dir (and without --delete-excluded), we add a protect filter-rule to ensure that files with the backup suffix are not deleted.
The file-count stats that are output by --progress were improved to better indicate what the numbers mean. For instance, the output: (xfer#5, to-check=8383/9999) indicates that this was the fifth file to be transferred, and we still need to check 8383 more files out of a total of 9999.
The include/exclude code now allows a dir/*** directive (with 3 trailing stars) to match both the dir itself as well as all the content below the dir (dir/** would not match the dir).
Added the --prune-empty-dirs (-m) option that makes the receiving rsync discard empty chains of directories from the file-list. This makes it easier to selectively copy files from a source hierarchy and end up with just the directories needed to hold the resulting files.
If the --itemize-changes (-i) option is repeated, rsync now includes unchanged files in the itemized output (similar to -vv, but without all the other verbose messages that can get in the way). Of course, the client must be version 2.6.7 for this to work, but the remote rsync only needs to be 2.6.7 if you're pushing files.
Added the --specials option to tell rsync to copy non-device special files (which rsync now attempts even as a normal user). The --devices option now requests the copying of just devices (character and block). The -D option still requests both (e.g. --devices and --specials), -a still implies -D, and non-root users still get a silent downgrade that omits device copying.
Added the --super option to make the receiver always attempt super-user activities. This is useful for systems that allow things such as devices to be created or ownership to be set without being UID 0, and is also useful for someone who wants to ensure that errors will be output if the receiving rsync isn't being run as root.
Added the --sockopts option for those few who want to customize the TCP options used to contact a daemon rsync.
Added a way for the --temp-dir option to be combined with a partial-dir setting that lets rsync avoid non-atomic updates (for those times when --temp-dir is not being used because space is tight).
A new support script, files-to-excludes, will transform a list of files into a set of include/exclude directives that will copy those files.
A new option, --executability (-E) can be used to preserve just the execute bit on files, for those times when using the --perms option is not desired.
The daemon now logs each connection and also each module-list request that it receives.
New log-format options: %M (modtime), %U (uid), %G (gid), and %B (permission bits, e.g. rwxr-xrwt).
The --dry-run option no longer forces the enabling of --verbose.
The --remove-sent-files option now does a better job of incrementally removing the sent files on the sending side (older versions tended to clump up all the removals at the end).
A daemon now supersedes its minimal SIGCHLD handler with the standard PID-remembering version after forking. This ensures that the generator can get the child-exit status from the receiver.
Use of the --bwlimit option no longer interferes with the remote rsync sending error messages about invalid/refused options.
Rsync no longer returns a usage error when used with one local source arg and no destination: this now implies the --list-only option, just like the comparable situation with a remote source arg.
Added the --copy-dirlinks option, a more limited version of --copy-links.
Various documentation improvements, including: a better synopsis, some improved examples, a better discussion of the presence and absence of --perms (including how it interacts with the new --executability and --chmod options), an extended discussion of --temp-dir, an improved discussion of --partial-dir, a better description of rsync's pattern matching characters, an improved --no-implied-dirs section, and the documenting of what the --stats option outputs.
Various new and updated diffs in the patches dir, including: acls.diff, xattrs.diff, atimes.diff, detect-renamed.diff, and slp.diff.

INTERNAL:

We now use sigaction() and sigprocmask() if possible, and fall back on signal() if not. Using sigprocmask() ensures that rsync enables all the signals that it needs, just in case it was started in a masked state.
Some buffer sizes were expanded a bit, particularly on systems where MAXPATHLEN is overly small (e.g. Cygwin).
If io_printf() tries to format more data than fits in the buffer, exit with an error instead of transmitting a truncated buffer.
If a va_copy macro is defined, lib/snprintf.c will use it when defining the VA_COPY macro.
Reduced the amount of stack memory needed for each level of directory recursion by nearly MAXPATHLEN bytes.
The wildmatch function was extended to allow an array of strings to be supplied as the string to match. This allows the exclude code to do less string copying.
Got rid of the safe_fname() function (and all the myriad calls) and replaced it with a new function in the log.c code that filters all the output going to the terminal.
Unified the f_name() and the f_name_to() functions.
Improved the hash-table code the sender uses to handle checksums to make it use slightly less memory and run just a little faster.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The diffs in the patches dir now require patch -p1 <DIFF instead of the previous -p0. Also, the version included in the release tar now affect generated files (e.g. configure, rsync.1, proto.h, etc.), so it is no longer necessary to run autoconf and/or yodl unless you're applying a patch that was checked out from CVS.
Several diffs in the patches dir now use the proper --enable-FOO configure option instead of --with-FOO to turn on the inclusion of the newly patched feature.
There is a new script, prepare-source than can be used to update the various generated files (proto.h, configure, etc.) even before configure has created the Makefile (this is mainly useful when patching the source with a patch that doesn't affect generated files).
The testsuite now sets HOME so that it won't be affected by a file such as ~/.popt.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.6 (28 Jul 2005)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

The zlib code was upgraded to version 1.2.3 in order to make it more secure. While the widely-publicized security problem in zlib 1.2.2 did not affect rsync, another security problem surfaced that affects rsync's zlib 1.1.4.

BUG FIXES:

The setting of flist->high in clean_flist() was wrong for an empty list. This could cause flist_find() to crash in certain rare circumstances (e.g. if just the right directory setup was around when --fuzzy was combined with --link-dest).
The outputting of hard-linked files when verbosity was > 1 was not right: (1) Without -i it would output the name of each hard-linked file as though it had been changed; it now outputs a is hard linked message for the file. (2) With -i it would output all dots for the unchanged attributes of a hard-link; it now changes those dots to spaces, as is done for other totally unchanged items.
When backing up a changed symlink or device, get rid of any old backup item so that we don't get an already exists error.
A couple places that were comparing a local and a remote modification-time were not honoring the --modify-window option.
Fixed a bug where the 'p' (permissions) itemized-changes flag might get set too often (if some non-significant mode bits differed).
Fixed a really old, minor bug that could cause rsync to warn about being unable to mkdir() a path that ends in /. because it just created the directory (required --relative, --no-implied-dirs, a source path that ended in either a trailing slash or a trailing /., and a non-existing destination dir to tickle the bug in a recent version).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Made the max verbosity setting in the rsyncd.conf file settable on a per-module basis (which now matches the documentation).
The rrsync script has been upgraded to verify the args of options that take args (instead of rejecting any such options). It was also changed to try to be more secure and to fix a problem in the parsing of a pull operation that has multiple source args. (See the support dir.)
Improved the documentation that explains the difference between a normal daemon transfer and a daemon-over remote-shell transfer.
Some of the diffs supplied in the patches dir were fixed and/or improved.

BUILD CHANGES:

Made configure define NOBODY_USER (currently hard-wired to nobody) and NOBODY_GROUP (set to either nobody or nogroup depending on what we find in the /etc/group file).
Added a test to the test suite, itemized.test, that tests the output of -i (log-format w/%i) and some double-verbose messages.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.5 (1 Jun 2005)

Changes in this version:

OUTPUT CHANGES:

Non-printable chars in filenames are now output using backslash-escaped characters rather than '?'s. Any non-printable character is output using 3 digits of octal (e.g. \n -> \012), and a backslash is now output as \\. Rsync also uses your locale setting, which can make it treat fewer high-bit characters as non-printable.
If rsync received an empty file-list when pulling files, it would output a nothing to do message and exit with a 0 (success) exit status, even if the remote rsync returned an error (it did not do this under the same conditions when pushing files). This was changed to make the pulling behavior the same as the pushing behavior: we now do the normal end-of-run outputting (depending on options) and exit with the appropriate exit status.

BUG FIXES:

A crash bug was fixed when a daemon had its path set to /, did not have chroot enabled, and used some anchored excludes in the rsyncd.conf file.
Fixed a bug in the transfer of a single file when -H is specified (rsync would either infinite loop or perhaps crash).
Fixed a case where the generator might try (and fail) to tweak the write-permissions of a read-only directory in list-only mode (this only caused an annoying warning message).
If --compare-dest or --link-dest uses a locally-copied file as the basis for an updated version, log this better when --verbose or -i is in effect.
Fixed the accidental disabling of --backup during the --delete-after processing.
Restored the ability to use the --address option in client mode (in addition to its use in daemon mode).
Make sure that some temporary progress information from the delete processing does not get left on the screen when it is followed by a newline.
When --existing skips a directory with extra verbosity, refer to it as a directory, not a file.
When transferring a single file to a different-named file, any generator messages that are source-file related no longer refer to the file by the destination filename.
Fixed a bug where hard-linking a group of files might fail if the generator hasn't created a needed destination directory yet.
Fixed a bug where a hard-linked group of files that is newly-linked to a file in a --link-dest dir doesn't link the files from the rest of the cluster.
When deleting files with the --one-file-system (-x) option set, rsync no longer tries to remove files from inside a mount-point on the receiving side. Also, we don't complain about being unable to remove the mount-point dir.
Fixed a compatibility problem when using --cvs-ignore (-C) and sending files to an older rsync without using --delete.
Make sure that a - ! or + ! include/exclude pattern does not trigger the list-clearing action that is reserved for !.
Avoid a timeout in the generator when the sender/receiver aren't handling the generator's checksum output quickly enough.
Fixed the omission of some directories in the delete processing when --relative (-R) was combined with a source path that had a trailing slash.
Fixed a case where rsync would erroneously delete some files and then re-transfer them when the options --relative (-R) and --recursive (-r) were both enabled (along with --delete) and a source path had a trailing slash.
Make sure that --max-size doesn't affect a device or a symlink.
Make sure that a system with a really small MAXPATHLEN does not cause the buffers in readfd_unbuffered() to be too small to receive normal messages. (This mainly affected Cygwin.)
If a source pathname ends with a filename of .., treat it as if ../ had been specified (so that we don't copy files to the parent dir of the destination).
If --delete is combined with a file-listing rsync command (i.e. no transfer is happening), avoid outputting a warning that we couldn't delete anything.
If --stats is specified with --delete-after, ensure that all the deleting messages are output before the statistics.
Improved one if in the deletion code that was only checking errno for ENOTEMPTY when it should have also been checking for EEXIST (for compatibility with OS variations).

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --only-write-batch=FILE option that may be used (instead of --write-batch=FILE) to create a batch file without doing any actual updating of the destination. This allows you to divert all the file-updating data away from a slow data link (as long as you are pushing the data to the remote server when creating the batch).
When the generator is taking a long time to fill up its output buffer (e.g. if the transferred files are few, small, or missing), it now periodically flushes the output buffer so that the sender/receiver can get started on the files sooner rather than later.
Improved the keep-alive code to handle a long silence between the sender and the receiver that can occur when the sender is receiving the checksum data for a large file.
Improved the auth-errors that are logged by the daemon to include some information on why the authorization failed: wrong user, password mismatch, etc. (The client-visible message is unchanged!)
Improved the client's handling of an @ERROR from a daemon so that it does not complain about an unexpectedly closed socket (since we really did expect the socket to close).
If the daemon can't open the log-file specified in rsyncd.conf, fall back to using syslog and log an appropriate warning. This is better than what was typically a totally silent (and fatal) failure (since a daemon is not usually run with the --no-detach option that was necessary to see the error on stderr).
The manpages now consistently refer to an rsync daemon as a daemon instead of a server (to distinguish it from the server process in a non-daemon transfer).
Made a small change to the rrsync script (restricted rsync -- in the support dir) to make a read-only server reject all --remove-* options when sending files (to future-proof it against the possibility of other similar options being added at some point).

INTERNAL:

Rsync now calls setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). This enables isprint() to better discern which filename characters need to be escaped in messages (which should result in fewer escaped characters in some locales).
Improved the naming of the log-file open/reopen/close functions.
Removed some protocol-compatibility code that was only needed to help someone running a pre-release of 2.6.4.

BUILD CHANGES:

Added configure option --disable-locale to disable any use of setlocale() in the binary.
Fixed a bug in the SUPPORT{,_HARD}_LINKS #defines which prevented rsync from being built without symlink or hard-link support.
Only #define HAVE_REMSH if it is going to be set to 1.
Configure now disables the use of mkstemp() under HP-UX (since they refuse to fix its broken handling of large files).
Configure now explicitly checks for the lseek64() function so that the code can use HAVE_LSEEK64 instead of inferring lseek64()'s presence based on the presence of the off64_t type.
Configure no longer mentions the change in the default remote-shell (from rsh to ssh) that occurred for the 2.6.0 release.
Some minor enhancements to the test scripts.
Added a few new *.diff files to the patches dir, including a patch that enables the optional copying of extended attributes.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.4 (30 March 2005)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 29.

OUTPUT CHANGES:

When rsync deletes a directory and outputs a verbose message about it, it now appends a trailing slash to the name instead of (only sometimes) outputting a preceding "directory " string.
The --stats output will contain file-list time-statistics if both sides are 2.6.4, or if the local side is 2.6.4 and the files are being pushed (since the stats come from the sending side). (Requires protocol 29 for a pull.)
The %o (operation) log-format escape now has a third value (besides send and recv): del. (with trailing dot to make it 4 chars). This changes the way deletions are logged in the daemon's log file.
When the --log-format option is combined with --verbose, rsync now avoids outputting the name of the file twice in most circumstances. As long as the --log-format item does not refer to any post-transfer items (such as %b or %c), the --log-format message is output prior to the transfer, so --verbose is now the equivalent of a --log-format of '%n%L' (which outputs the name and any link info). If the log output must occur after the transfer to be complete, the only time the name is also output prior to the transfer is when --progress was specified (so that the name will precede the progress stats, and the full --log-format output will come after).
Non-printable characters in filenames are replaced with a '?' to avoid corrupting the screen or generating empty lines in the output.

BUG FIXES:

Restore the list-clearing behavior of ! in a .cvsignore file (2.6.3 was only treating it as a special token in an rsync include/exclude file).
The combination of --verbose and --dry-run now mentions the full list of changes that would be output without --dry-run.
Avoid a mkdir warning when removing a directory in the destination that already exists in the --backup-dir.
An OS that has a binary mode for its files (such as Cygwin) needed setmode(fd, O_BINARY) called on the temp-file we opened with mkstemp(). (Fix derived from Cygwin's 2.6.3 rsync package.)
Fixed a potential hang when verbosity is high, the client side is the sender, and the file-list is large.
Fixed a potential protocol-corrupting bug where the generator could merge a message from the receiver into the middle of a multiplexed packet of data if only part of that data had been written out to the socket when the message from the generator arrived.
We now check if the OS doesn't support using mknod() for creating FIFOs and sockets, and compile-in some compatibility code using mkfifo() and socket() when necessary.
Fixed an off-by-one error in the handling of --max-delete=N. Also, if the --max-delete limit is exceeded during a run, we now output a warning about this at the end of the run and exit with a new error code (25).
One place in the code wasn't checking if fork() failed.
The ignore nonreadable daemon parameter used to erroneously affect readable symlinks that pointed to a non-existent file.
If the OS does not have lchown() and a chown() of a symlink will affect the referent of a symlink (as it should), we no longer try to set the user and group of a symlink.
The generator now properly runs the hard-link loop and the dir-time rewriting loop after we're sure that the redo phase is complete.
When --backup was specified with --partial-dir=DIR, where DIR is a relative path, the backup code was erroneously trying to backup a file that was put into the partial-dir.
If a file gets resent in a single transfer and the --backup option is enabled along with --inplace, rsync no longer performs a duplicate backup (it used to overwrite the first backup with the failed file).
One call to flush_write_file() was not being checked for an error.
The --no-relative option was not being sent from the client to a server sender.
If an rsync daemon specified dont compress = ... for a file and the client tried to specify --compress, the libz code was not handling a compression level of 0 properly. This could cause a transfer failure if the block-size for a file was large enough (e.g. rsync might have exited with an error for large files).
Fixed a bug that would sometimes surface when using --compress and sending a file with a block-size larger than 64K (either manually specified, or computed due to the file being really large). Prior versions of rsync would sometimes fail to decompress the data properly, and thus the transferred file would fail its verification.
If a daemon can't open the specified log file (i.e. syslog is not being used), die without crashing. We also output an error about the failure on stderr (which will only be seen if --no-detach was specified) and exit with a new error code (6).
A local transfer no longer duplicates all its include/exclude options (since the forked process already has a copy of the exclude list, there's no need to send them a set of duplicates).
The output of the items that are being updated by the generator (dirs, symlinks, devices) is now intermingled in the proper order with the output from the items that the receiver is updating (regular files) when pulling. This misordering was particularly bad when --progress was specified. (Requires protocol 29.)
When --timeout is specified, lulls that occur in the transfer while the generator is doing work that does not generate socket traffic (looking for changed files, deleting files, doing directory-time touch-ups, etc.) will cause a new keep-alive packet to be sent that should keep the transfer going as long as the generator continues to make progress. (Requires protocol 29.)
The stat size of a device is not added to the total file size of the items in the transfer (the size might be undefined on some OSes).
Fixed a problem with refused-option messages sometimes not making it back to the client side when a remote --files-from was in effect and the daemon was the receiver.
The --compare-dest option was not updating a file that differed in (the preserved) attributes from the version in the compare-dest DIR.
When rsync is copying files into a write-protected directory, fixed the change-report output for the directory so that we don't report an identical directory as changed.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Rsync now supports popt's option aliases, which means that you can use /etc/popt and/or ~/.popt to create your own option aliases.
Added the --delete-during (--del) option which will delete files from the receiving side incrementally as each directory in the transfer is being processed. This makes it more efficient than the default, before-the-transfer behavior, which is now also available as --delete-before (and is still the default --delete-WHEN option that will be chosen if --delete or --delete-excluded is specified without a --delete-WHEN choice). All the --del* options infer --delete, so an rsync daemon that refuses delete will still refuse to allow any file-deleting options (including the new --remove-sent-files option).
All the --delete-WHEN options are now more memory efficient: Previously an duplicate set of file-list objects was created on the receiving side for the entire destination hierarchy. The new algorithm only creates one directory of objects at a time (for files inside the transfer).
Added the --copy-dest option, which works like --link-dest except that it locally copies identical files instead of hard-linking them.
Added support for specifying multiple --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or --link-dest options, but only of a single type. (Promoted from the patches dir and enhanced.) (Requires protocol 29.)
Added the --max-size option. (Promoted from the patches dir.)
The daemon-mode options are now separated from the normal rsync options so that they can't be mixed together. This makes it impossible to start a daemon that has improper default option values (which could cause problems when a client connects, such as hanging or crashing).
The --bwlimit option may now be used in combination with --daemon to specify both a default value for the daemon side and a value that cannot be exceeded by a user-specified --bwlimit option.
Added the port parameter to the rsyncd.conf file. (Promoted from the patches dir.) Also added address. The command-line options take precedence over a config-file option, as expected.
In _exit_cleanup(): when we are exiting with a partially-received file, we now flush any data in the write-cache before closing the partial file.
The --inplace support was enhanced to work with --compare-dest, --link-dest, and (the new) --copy-dest options. (Requires protocol 29.)
Added the --dirs (-d) option for an easier way to copy directories without recursion. Any directories that are encountered are created on the destination. Specifying a directory with a trailing slash copies its immediate contents to the destination.
The --files-from option now implies --dirs (-d).
Added the --list-only option, which is mainly a way for the client to put the server into listing mode without needing to resort to any internal option kluges (e.g. the age-old use of -r --exclude='/*/*' for a non-recursive listing). This option is used automatically (behind the scenes) when a modern rsync speaks to a modern daemon, but may also be specified manually if you want to force the use of the --list-only option over a remote-shell connection.
Added the --omit-dir-times (-O) option, which will avoid updating the modified time for directories when --times was specified. This option will avoid an extra pass through the file-list at the end of the transfer (to tweak all the directory times), which may provide an appreciable speedup for a really large transfer. (Promoted from the patches dir.)
Added the --filter (-f) option and its helper option, -F. Filter rules are an extension to the existing include/exclude handling that also supports nested filter files as well as per-directory filter files (like .cvsignore, but with full filter-rule parsing). This new option was chosen in order to ensure that all existing include/exclude processing remained 100% compatible with older versions. Protocol 29 is needed for full filter-rule support, but backward-compatible rules work with earlier protocol versions. (Promoted from the patches dir and enhanced.)
Added the --delay-updates option that puts all updated files into a temporary directory (by default .~tmp~, but settable via the --partial-dir=DIR option) until the end of the transfer. This makes the updates a little more atomic for a large transfer.
If rsync is put into the background, any output from --progress is reduced.
Documented the max verbosity setting for rsyncd.conf. (This setting was added a couple releases ago, but left undocumented.)
The sender and the generator now double-check the file-list index they are given, and refuse to try to do a file transfer on a non-file index (since that would indicate that something had gone very wrong).
Added the --itemize-changes (-i) option, which is a way to output a more detailed list of what files changed and in what way. The effect is the same as specifying a --log-format of %i %n%L (see both the rsync and rsyncd.conf manpages). Works with --dry-run too.
Added the --fuzzy (-y) option, which attempts to find a basis file for a file that is being created from scratch. The current algorithm only looks in the destination directory for the created file, but it does attempt to find a match based on size/mod-time (in case the file was renamed with no other changes) as well as based on a fuzzy name-matching algorithm. This option requires protocol 29 because it needs the new file-sorting order. (Promoted from patches dir and enhanced.) (Requires protocol 29.)
Added the --remove-sent-files option, which lets you move files between systems.
The hostname in HOST:PATH or HOST::PATH may now be an IPv6 literal enclosed in '[' and ']' (e.g. [::1]). (We already allowed IPv6 literals in the rsync://HOST:PORT/PATH format.)
When rsync recurses to build the file list, it no longer keeps open one or more directory handles from the dir's parent dirs.
When building under windows, the default for --daemon is now to avoid detaching, requiring the new --detach option to force rsync to detach.
The --dry-run option can now be combined with either --write-batch or --read-batch, allowing you to run a do-nothing test command to see what would happen without --dry-run.
The daemon's read only config item now sets an internal read_only variable that makes extra sure that no write/delete calls on the read-only side can succeed.
The log-format % escapes can now have a numeric field width in between the % and the escape letter (e.g. %-40n %08p).
Improved the option descriptions in the --help text.

SUPPORT FILES:

Added atomic-rsync to the support dir: a perl script that will transfer some files using rsync, and then move the updated files into place all at once at the end of the transfer. Only works when pulling, and uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files to effect its update.
Added mnt-excl to the support dir: a perl script that takes the /proc/mounts file and translates it into a set of excludes that will exclude all mount points (even mapped mounts to the same disk). The excludes are made relative to the specified source dir and properly anchored.
Added savetransfer.c to the support dir: a C program that can make a copy of all the data that flows over the wire. This lets you test for data corruption (by saving the data on both the sending side and the receiving side) and provides one way to debug a protocol error.
Added rrsync to the support dir: this is an updated version of Joe Smith's restricted rsync perl script. This helps to ensure that only certain rsync commands can be run by an ssh invocation.

INTERNAL:

Added better checking of the checksum-header values that come over the socket.
Merged a variety of file-deleting functions into a single function so that it is easier to maintain.
Improved the type of some variables (particularly blocksize vars) for consistency and proper size.
Got rid of the uint64 type (which we didn't need).
Use a slightly more compatible set of core #include directives.
Defined int32 in a way that ensures that the build dies if we can't find a variable with at least 32 bits.

PROTOCOL DIFFERENCES FOR VERSION 29:

A 16-bit flag-word is transmitted after every file-list index. This indicates what is changing between the sender and the receiver. The generator now transmits an index and a flag-word to indicate when dirs and symlinks have changed (instead of producing a message), which makes the outputting of the information more consistent and less prone to screen corruption (because the local receiver/sender is now outputting all the file-change info messages).
If a file is being hard-linked, the ITEM_XNAME_FOLLOWS bit is enabled in the flag-word and the name of the file that was linked immediately follows in vstring format (see below).
If a file is being transferred with an alternate-basis file, the ITEM_BASIS_TYPE_FOLLOWS bit is enabled in the flag-word and a single byte follows, indicating what type of basis file was chosen. If that indicates that a fuzzy-match was selected, the ITEM_XNAME_FOLLOWS bit is set in the flag-word and the name of the match in vstring format follows the basis byte. A vstring is a variable length string that has its size written prior to the string, and no terminating null. If the string is from 1-127 bytes, the length is a single byte. If it is from 128-32767 bytes, the length is written as ((len >> 8) | 0x80) followed by (len % 0x100).
The sending of exclude names is done using filter-rule syntax. This means that all names have a prefixed rule indicator, even excludes (which used to be sent as a bare pattern, when possible). The -C option will include the per-dir .cvsignore merge file in the list of filter rules so it is positioned correctly (unlike in some older transfer scenarios).
Rsync sorts the filename list in a different way: it sorts the subdir names after the non-subdir names for each dir's contents, and it always puts a dir's contents immediately after the dir's name in the list. (Previously an item named foo.txt would sort in between directory foo/ and foo/bar.)
When talking to a protocol 29 rsync daemon, a list-only request is able to note this before the options are sent over the wire and the new --list-only option is included in the options.
When the --stats bytes are sent over the wire (or stored in a batch), they now include two elapsed-time values: one for how long it took to build the file-list, and one for how long it took to send it over the wire (each expressed in thousandths of a second).
When --delete-excluded is specified with some filter rules (AKA excludes), a client sender will now initiate a send of the rules to the receiver (older protocols used to omit the sending of excludes in this situation since there were no receiver-specific rules that survived --delete-excluded back then). Note that, as with all the filter-list sending, only items that are significant to the other side will actually be sent over the wire, so the filter-rule list that is sent in this scenario is often empty.
An index equal to the file-list count is sent as a keep-alive packet from the generator to the sender, which then forwards it on to the receiver. This normally invalid index is only a valid keep-alive packet if the 16-bit flag-word that follows it contains a single bit (ITEM_IS_NEW, which is normally an illegal flag to appear alone).
A protocol-29 batch file includes a bit for the setting of the --dirs option and for the setting of the --compress option. Also, the shell script created by --write-batch will use the --filter option instead of --exclude-from to capture any filter rules.

BUILD CHANGES:

Handle an operating system that use mkdev() in place of makedev().
Improved configure to better handle cross-compiling.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.3 (30 Sep 2004)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

A bug in the sanitize_path routine (which affects a non-chrooted rsync daemon) could allow a user to craft a pathname that would get transformed into an absolute path for certain options (but not for file-transfer names). If you're running an rsync daemon with chroot disabled, please upgrade, ESPECIALLY if the user privs you run rsync under is anything above nobody.

OUTPUT CHANGES (ATTN: those using a script to parse the verbose output):
Please note that the 2-line footer (output when verbose) now uses the term sent instead of wrote and received instead of read. If you are not parsing the numeric values out of this footer, a script would be better off using the empty line prior to the footer as the indicator that the verbose output is over.
The output from the --stats option was similarly affected to change written to sent and read to received.
Rsync ensures that a filename that contains a newline gets mentioned with each newline transformed into a question mark (which prevents a filename from causing an empty line to be output).
The backed up ... message that is output when at least 2 --verbose options are specified is now the same both with and without the --backup-dir option.

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a crash bug that might appear when --delete was used and multiple source directories were specified.
Fixed a 32-bit truncation of the file length when generating the checksums.
The --backup code no longer attempts to create some directories over and over again (generating warnings along the way).
Fixed a bug in the reading of the secrets file (by the daemon) and the password file (by the client): the files no longer need to be terminated by a newline for their content to be read in.
If a file has a read error on the sending side or the reconstructed data doesn't match the expected checksum (perhaps due to the basis file changing during the transfer), the receiver will no longer retain the resulting file unless the --partial option was specified. (Note: for the read-error detection to work, neither side can be older than 2.6.3 -- older receivers will always retain the file, and older senders don't tell the receiver that the file had a read error.)
If a file gets resent in a single transfer and the --backup option is enabled, rsync no longer performs a duplicate backup (it used to overwrite the original file in the backup area).
Files specified in the daemon's exclude or exclude from config items are now excluded from being uploaded (assuming that the module allows uploading at all) in addition to the old download exclusion.
Got rid of a potential hang in the receiver when near the end of a phase.
When using --backup without a --backup-dir, rsync no longer preserves the modify time on directories. This avoids confusing NFS.
When --copy-links (-L) is specified, we now output a separate error for a symlink that has no referent instead of claiming that a file vanished.
The --copy-links (-L) option no longer has the side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow symlinks. See the --keep-dirlinks option (mentioned below) for a way to specify that behavior.
Error messages from the daemon server's option-parsing (such as refused options) are now successfully transferred back to the client (the server used to fail to send the message because the socket wasn't in the right state for the message to get through).
Most transfer errors that occur during a daemon transfer are now returned to the user in addition to being logged (some messages are intended to be daemon-only and are not affected by this).
Fixed a bug in the daemon authentication code when using one of the batch-processing options.
We try to work around some buggy IPv6 implementations that fail to implement IPV6_V6ONLY. This should fix the address in use error that some daemons get when running on an OS with a buggy IPv6 implementation. Also, if the new code gets this error, we might suggest that the user specify --ipv4 or --ipv6 (if we think it will help).
When the remote rsync dies, make a better effort to recover any error messages it may have sent before dying (the local rsync used to just die with a socket-write error).
When using --delete and a --backup-dir that contains files that are hard-linked to their destination equivalents, rsync now makes sure that removed files really get removed (avoids a really weird rename() behavior).
Avoid a bogus run-time complaint about a lack of 64-bit integers when the int64 type is defined as an off_t and it actually has 64-bits.
Added a configure check for open64() without mkstemp64() so that we can avoid using mkstemp() when such a combination is encountered. This bypasses a problem writing out large temp files on OSes such as AIX and HP-UX.
Fixed an age-old crash problem with --read-batch on a local copy (rsync was improperly assuming --whole-file for the local copy).
When --dry-run (-n) is used and the destination directory does not exist, rsync now produces a correct report of files that would be sent instead of dying with a chdir() error.
Fixed a bug that could cause a slow-to-connect rsync daemon to die with an error instead of waiting for the connection to finish.
Fixed an ssh interaction that could cause output to be lost when the user chose to combine the output of rsync's stdout and stderr (e.g. using the 2>&1).
Fixed an option-parsing bug when --files-from got passed to a daemon.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added the --partial-dir=DIR option that lets you specify where to (temporarily) put a partially transferred file (instead of overwriting the destination file). E.g. --partial-dir=.rsync-partial Also added support for the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable that, when found, transforms a regular --partial option (such as the convenient -P option) into one that also specifies a directory.
Added --keep-dirlinks (-K), which allows you to symlink a directory onto another partition on the receiving side and have rsync treat it as matching a normal directory from the sender.
Added the --inplace option that tells rsync to write each destination file without using a temporary file. The matching of existing data in the destination file can be severely limited by this, but there are also cases where this is more efficient (such as appending data). Use only when needed (see the manpage for more details).
Added the write only option for the daemon's config file.
Added long-option names for -4 and -6 (namely --ipv4 and --ipv6) and documented all these options in the manpage.
Improved the handling of the --bwlimit option so that it's less bursty, more accurate, and works properly over a larger range of values.
The rsync daemon-over-ssh code now looks for SSH_CONNECTION and SSH2_CLIENT in addition to SSH_CLIENT to figure out the IP address.
Added the --checksum-seed=N option for advanced users.
Batch writing/reading has a brand-new implementation that is simpler, fixes a few weird problems with the old code (such as no longer sprinkling the batch files into different dirs or even onto different systems), and is much less intrusive into the code (making it easier to maintain for the future). The new code generates just one data file instead of three, which makes it possible to read the batch on stdin via a remote shell. Also, the old requirement of forcing the same fixed checksum-seed for all batch processing has been removed.
If an rsync daemon has a module set with list = no (which hides its presence in the list of available modules), a user that fails to authenticate gets the same unknown module error that they would get if the module were actually unknown (while still logging the real error to the daemon's log file). This prevents fishing for module names.
The daemon's refuse options config item now allows you to match option names using wildcards and/or the single-letter option names.
Each transferred file now gets its permissions and modified-time updated before the temp-file gets moved into place. Previously, the finished file would have a very brief window where its permissions disallowed all group and world access.
Added the ability to parse a literal IPv6 address in an rsync: URL (e.g. rsync://[2001:638:500:101::21]:873/module/dir).
The daemon's wildcard expanding code can now handle more than 1000 filenames (it's now limited by memory instead of having a hard-wired limit).

INTERNAL:

Some cleanup in the exclude code has saved some per-exclude memory and made the code easier to maintain.
Improved the argv-overflow checking for a remote command that has a lot of args.
Use rsyserr() in the various places that were still calling rprintf() with strerror() as an arg.
If an rsync daemon is listening on multiple sockets (to handle both IPv4 and IPv6 to a single port), we now close all the unneeded file handles after we accept a connection (we used to close just one of them).
Optimized the handling of larger block sizes (rsync used to slow to a crawl if the block size got too large).
Optimized away a loop in hash_search().
Some improvements to the sanitize_path() and clean_fname() functions makes them more efficient and produce better results (while still being compatible with the file-name cleaning that gets done on both sides when sending the file-list).
Got rid of alloc_sanitize_path() after adding a destination-buffer arg to sanitize_path() made it possible to put all the former's functionality into the latter.
The file-list that is output when at least 4 verbose options are specified reports the uid value on the sender even when rsync is not running as root (since we might be sending to a root receiver).

BUILD CHANGES:

Added a gen target to rebuild most of the generated files, including configure, config.h.in, the manpages, and proto.h.
If make proto doesn't find some changes in the prototypes, the proto.h file is left untouched (its time-stamp used to always be updated).
The variable $STRIP (that is optionally set by the install-strip target's rule) was changed to $INSTALL_STRIP because some systems have $STRIP already set in the environment.
Fixed a build problem when SUPPORT_HARD_LINKS isn't defined.
When cross-compiling, the gettimeofday() function is now assumed to be a modern version that takes two-args (since we can't test it).

DEVELOPER RELATED:

The scripts in the testsuite dir were cleaned up a bit and a few new tests added.
Some new diffs were added to the patches dir, and some accepted ones were removed.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.2 (30 Apr 2004)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fixed a major bug in the sorting of the filenames when --relative is used for some sources (just sources such as / and /* were affected). This fix ensures that we ask for the right file-list item when requesting changes from the sender.
Rsync now checks the return value of the close() function to better report disk-full problems on an NFS file system.
Restored the old daemon-server behavior of logging error messages rather than returning them to the user. (A better long-term fix will be sought in the future.)
An obscure uninitialized-variable bug was fixed in the uid/gid code. (This bug probably had no ill effects.)

BUILD CHANGES:

Got rid of the configure check for sys/sysctl.h (it wasn't used and was causing a problem on some systems). Also improved the broken-largefile-locking test to try to avoid failure due to an NFS build-dir.
Fixed a compile problem on systems that don't define AI_NUMERICHOST.
Fixed a compile problem in the popt source for compilers that don't support __attribute__.

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Improved the testsuite's merge test to work on OSF1.
Two new diffs were added to the patches dir.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.1 (26 Apr 2004)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 28.

SECURITY FIXES:

Paths sent to an rsync daemon are more thoroughly sanitized when chroot is not used. If you're running a non-read-only rsync daemon with chroot disabled, please upgrade, ESPECIALLY if the user privs you run rsync under is anything above nobody.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Lower memory use, more optimal transfer of data over the socket, and lower CPU usage (see the INTERNAL section for details).
The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable can now contain a USER:PASS@ prefix before the HOST:PORT information. (Bardur Arantsson)
The --progress output now mentions how far along in the transfer we are, including both a count of files transferred and a percentage of the total file-count that we've processed. It also shows better current-rate-of-transfer and remaining-transfer-time values.
Documentation changes now attempt to describe some often misunderstood features more clearly.

BUG FIXES:

When -x (--one-file-system) is combined with -L (--copy-links) or --copy-unsafe-links, no symlinked files are skipped, even if the referent file is on a different filesystem.
The --link-dest code now works properly for a non-root user when (1) the UIDs of the source and destination differ and -o was specified, or (2) when the group of the source can't be used on the destination and -g was specified.
Fixed a bug in the handling of -H (hard-links) that might cause the expanded PATH/NAME value of the current item to get overwritten (due to an expanded-name caching bug).
We now reset the new data has been sent flag at the start of each file we send. This makes sure that an interrupted transfer with the --partial option set doesn't keep a shorter temp file than the current basis file when no new data has been transferred over the wire for that file.
Fixed a byte-order problem in --batch-mode on big-endian machines. (Jay Fenlason)
When using --cvs-exclude, the exclude items we get from a per-directory's .cvsignore file once again only affect that one directory (not all following directories too). The items are also now properly word-split and parsed without any +/- prefix parsing.
When specifying the USER@HOST: prefix for a file, the USER part can now contain an '@', if needed (i.e. the last '@' is used to find the HOST, not the first).
Fixed some bugs in the handling of group IDs for non-root users: (1) It properly handles a group that the sender didn't have a name for (it would previously skip changing the group on any files in that group). (2) If --numeric-ids is used, rsync no longer attempts to set groups that the user doesn't have the permission to set.
Fixed the refuse options setting in the rsyncd.conf file.
Improved the -x (--one-file-system) flag's handling of any mount-point directories we encounter. It is both more optimal (in that it no longer does a useless scan of the contents of the mount-point dirs) and also fixes a bug where a remapped mount of the original filesystem could get discovered in a subdir we should be ignoring.
Rsync no longer discards a double-slash at the start of a filename when trying to open the file. It also no longer constructs names that start with a double slash (unless the user supplied them).
Path-specifying options to a daemon should now work the same with or without chroot turned on. Previously, such a option (such as --link-dest) would get its absolute path munged into a relative one if chroot was not on, making that setting fairly useless. Rsync now transforms the path into one that is based on the module's base dir when chroot is not enabled.
Fixed a compatibility problem interacting with older rsync versions that might send us an empty --suffix value without telling us that --backup-dir was specified.
The hosts allow option for a daemon-over-remote-shell process now has improved support for IPv6 addresses and a fix for systems that have a length field in their socket structs.
Fixed the ability to request an empty backup --suffix when sending files to an rsync daemon.
Fixed an option-parsing bug when --files-from was sent to a server sender.

INTERNAL:

Most of the I/O is now buffered, which results in a pretty large speedup when running under MS Windows. (Craig Barratt)
Optimizations to the name-handling/comparing code have made some significant reductions in user-CPU time for large file sets.
Some cleanup of the variable types make the code more consistent.
Reduced memory requirements of hard link preservation. (J.W. Schultz)
Implemented a new algorithm for hard-link handling that speeds up the code significantly. (J.W. Schultz and Wayne Davison)
The --hard-link option now uses the first existing file in the group of linked files as the basis for the transfer. This prevents the sub-optimal transfer of a file's data when a new hardlink is added on the sending side and it sorts alphabetically earlier in the list than the files that are already present on the receiving side.
Dropped support for protocol versions less than 20 (2.3.0 released 15 Mar 1999) and activated warnings for protocols less than 25 (2.5.0 released 23 Aug 2001). (Wayne Davison and J.W. Schultz, severally)
More optimal data transmission for --hard-links (protocol 28).
More optimal data transmission for --checksum (protocol 28).
Less memory is used when --checksum is specified.
Less memory is used in the file list (a per-file savings).
The generator is now better about not modifying the file list during the transfer in order to avoid a copy-on-write memory bifurcation (on systems where fork() uses shared memory). Previously, rsync's shared memory would slowly become unshared, resulting in real memory usage nearly doubling on the receiving side by the end of the transfer. Now, as long as permissions are being preserved, the shared memory should remain that way for the entire transfer.
Changed hardlink info and file_struct + strings to use allocation pools. This reduces memory use for large file-sets and permits freeing memory to the OS. (J.W. Schultz)
The 2 pipes used between the receiver and generator processes (which are forked on the same machine) were reduced to 1 pipe and the protocol improved so that (1) it is now impossible to have the redo pipe fill up and hang rsync, and (2) trailing messages from the receiver don't get lost on their way through the generator over to the sender (which mainly affected hard-link messages and verbose --stats output).
Improved the internal uid/gid code to be more portable and a little more optimized.
The device numbers sent when using --devices are now sent as separate major/minor values with 32-bit accuracy (protocol 28). Previously, the copied devices were sent as a single 32-bit number. This will make inter-operation of 64-bit binaries more compatible with their 32-bit brethren (with both ends of the connection are using protocol 28). Note that optimizations in the binary protocol for sending the device numbers often results in fewer bytes being used than before, even though more precision is now available.
Some cleanup of the exclude/include structures and its code made things clearer (internally), simpler, and more efficient.
The reading & writing of the file-list in batch-mode is now handled by the same code that sends & receives the list over the wire. This makes it much easier to maintain. (Note that the batch code is still considered to be experimental.)

BUILD CHANGES:

The configure script now accepts --with-rsyncd-conf=PATH to override the default value of the /etc/rsyncd.conf file.
Fixed configure bug when running ./configure --disable-ipv6.
Fixed compilation problem on Tru64 Unix (having to do with sockaddr.sa_len and sockaddr.sin_len).

DEVELOPER RELATED:

Fixed make test bug when build dir is not the source dir.
Added a couple extra diffs in the patches dir, removed the ones that got applied, and rebuilt the rest.

NEWS for rsync 2.6.0 (1 Jan 2004)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 27. The maximum accepted protocol number was increased from 30 to 40.

ENHANCEMENTS:

ssh is now the default remote shell for rsync. If you want to change this, configure like this: ./configure --with-rsh=rsh.
Added --files-from, --no-relative, --no-implied-dirs, and --from0. Note that --from0 affects the line-ending character for all the files read by the --*-from options. (Wayne Davison)
Length of csum2 is now per-file starting with protocol version 27. (J.W. Schultz)
Per-file dynamic block size is now sqrt(file length). The per-file checksum size is determined according to an algorithm provided by Donovan Baarda which reduces the probability of rsync algorithm corrupting data and falling back using the whole md4 checksums. (J.W. Schultz, Donovan Baarda)
The --stats option no longer includes the (debug) malloc summary unless the verbose option was specified at least twice.
Added a new error/warning code for when files vanish from the sending side. Made vanished source files not interfere with the file-deletion pass when --delete-after was specified.
Various trailing-info sections are now preceded by a newline.

BUG FIXES:

Fixed several exclude/include matching bugs when using wild-cards. This has a several user-visible effects, all of which make the matching more consistent and intuitive. This should hopefully not cause anyone problems since it makes the matching work more like what people are expecting. (Wayne Davison)
A pattern with a ** no longer causes a * to match slashes. For example, with /*/foo/**, foo must be 2 levels deep. [If your string has BOTH * and ** wildcards, changing the * wildcards to ** will provide the old behavior in all versions.]
**/foo now matches at the base of the transfer (like /foo does). [Use /**/foo to get the old behavior in all versions.]
A non-anchored wildcard term floats to match beyond the base of the transfer. E.g. CVS/R* matches at the end of the path, just like the non-wildcard term CVS/Root does. [Use /CVS/R* to get the old behavior in all versions.]
Including a ** in the match term causes it to be matched against the entire path, not just the name portion, even if there aren't any interior slashes in the term. E.g. foo**bar would exclude /path/foo-bar (just like before) as well as /foo-path/baz-bar (unlike before). [Use foo*bar to get the old behavior in all versions.]
The exclude list specified in the daemon's config file is now properly applied to the pulled items no matter how deep the user's file-args are in the source tree. (Wayne Davison)
For protocol version >= 27, mdfour_tail() is called when the block size (including checksum_seed) is a multiple of 64. Previously it was not called, giving the wrong MD4 checksum. (Craig Barratt)
For protocol version >= 27, a 64 bit bit counter is used in mdfour.c as required by the RFC. Previously only a 32 bit bit counter was used, causing incorrect MD4 file checksums for file sizes >= 512MB - 4. (Craig Barratt)
Fixed a crash bug when interacting with older rsync versions and multiple files of the same name are destined for the same dir. (Wayne Davison)
Keep tmp names from overflowing MAXPATHLEN.
Make --link-dest honor the absence of -p, -o, and -g.
Made rsync treat a trailing slash in the destination in a more consistent manner.
Fixed file I/O error detection. (John Van Essen)
Fixed bogus malformed address {hostname} message in rsyncd log when checking IP address against hostnames from hosts allow and hosts deny parameters in config file.
Print heap statistics when verbose >= 2 instead of when >= 1.
Fixed a compression (-z) bug when syncing a mostly-matching file that contains already-compressed data. (Yasuoka Masahiko and Wayne Davison)
Fixed a bug in the --backup code that could cause deleted files to not get backed up.
When the backup code makes new directories, create them with mode 0700 instead of 0755 (since the directory permissions in the backup tree are not yet copied from the main tree).
Call setgroups() in a more portable manner.
Improved file-related error messages to better indicate exactly what pathname failed. (Wayne Davison)
Fixed some bugs in the handling of --delete and --exclude when using the --relative (-R) option. (Wayne Davison)
Fixed bug that prevented regular files from replacing special files and caused a directory in --link-dest or --compare-dest to block the creation of a file with the same path. A directory still cannot be replaced by a regular file unless --delete specified. (J.W. Schultz)
Detect and report when open or opendir succeed but read and readdir fail caused by network filesystem issues and truncated files. (David Norwood, Michael Brown, J.W. Schultz)
Added a fix that should give ssh time to restore the tty settings if the user presses Ctrl-C at an ssh password prompt.

INTERNAL:

Eliminated vestigial support for old versions that we stopped supporting. (J.W. Schultz)
Simplified some of the option-parsing code. (Wayne Davison)
Some cleanup made to the exclude code, as well as some new defines added to enhance readability. (Wayne Davison)
Changed the protocol-version code so that it can interact at a lower protocol level than the maximum supported by both sides. Added an undocumented option, --protocol=N, to force the value we advertise to the other side (primarily for testing purposes). (Wayne Davison)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.7 (4 Dec 2003)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Fix buffer handling bugs. (Andrew Tridgell, Martin Pool, Paul Russell, Andrea Barisani)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.6, aka "the dwd-between-jobs release" (26 Jan 2003)

Changes in this version:

ENHANCEMENTS:

The --delete-after option now implies --delete. (Wayne Davison)
The --suffix option can now be used with --backup-dir. (Michael Zimmerman)
Combining :: syntax with the --rsh/-e option now uses the specified remote-shell as a transport to talk to a (newly-spawned) server-daemon. This allows someone to use daemon features, such as modules, over a secure protocol, such as ssh. (JD Paul)
The rsync:// syntax for daemon connections is now accepted in the destination field.
If the file name given to --include-from or --exclude-from is -, rsync will read from standard input. (J.W. Schultz)
New option --link-dest which is like --compare-dest except that unchanged files are hard-linked in to the destination directory. (J.W. Schultz)
Don't report an error if an excluded file disappears during an rsync run. (Eugene Chupriyanov and Bo Kersey)
Added .svn to --cvs-exclude list to support subversion. (Jon Middleton)
Properly support IPv6 addresses in the rsyncd.conf hosts allow and hosts deny fields. (Hideaki Yoshifuji)
Changed exclude file handling to permit DOS or MAC style line terminations. (J.W. Schultz)
Ignore errors from chmod when -p/-a/--preserve-perms is not set. (Dave Dykstra)

BUG FIXES:

Fix forward name lookup failed errors on AIX 4.3.3. (John L. Allen, Martin Pool)
Generate each file's rolling-checksum data as we send it, not in a separate (memory-eating) pass before hand. This prevents timeout errors on really large files. (Stefan Nehlsen)
Fix compilation on Tru64. (Albert Chin, Zoong Pham)
Better handling of some client-server errors. (Martin Pool)
Fixed a crash that would occur when sending a list of files that contains a duplicate name (if it sorts to the end of the file list) and using --delete. (Wayne Davison)
Fixed the file-name duplicate-removal code when dealing with multiple dups in a row. (Wayne Davison)
Fixed a bug that caused rsync to lose the exit status of its child processes and sometimes return an exit code of 0 instead of showing an error. (David R. Staples, Dave Dykstra)
Fixed bug in --copy-unsafe-links that caused it to be completely broken. (Dave Dykstra)
Prevent infinite recursion in cleanup code under certain circumstances. (Sviatoslav Sviridov and Marc Espie)
Fixed a bug that prevented rsync from creating intervening directories when --relative-paths/-R is set. (Craig Barratt)
Prevent Connection reset by peer messages from Cygwin. (Randy O'Meara)

INTERNAL:

Many code cleanups and improved internal documentation. (Martin Pool, Nelson Beebe)
Portability fixes. (Dave Dykstra and Wayne Davison)
More test cases. (Martin Pool)
Some test-case fixes. (Brian Poole, Wayne Davison)
Updated included popt to the latest vendor drop, version 1.6.4. (Jos Backus)
Updated config.guess and config.sub to latest versions; this means rsync should build on more platforms. (Paul Green)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.5, aka Snowy River (2 Apr 2002)

Changes in this version:

ENHANCEMENTS:

With --progress, when a transfer is complete show the time taken; otherwise show expected time to complete. (Cameron Simpson)
Make make install-strip works properly, and make install accepts a DESTDIR variable for help in building binary packages. (Peter Breitenlohner, Greg Louis)
If configured with --enable-maintainer-mode, then on receipt of a fatal signal rsync will try to open an xterm running gdb, similarly to Samba's panic action or GNOME's bug-buddy. (Martin Pool)

BUG FIXES:

Fix situation where failure to fork (e.g. because out of process slots) would cause rsync to kill all processes owned by the current user. Yes, really! (Paul Haas, Martin Pool)
Fix test suite on Solaris. (Jos Backus, Martin Pool)
Fix minor memory leak in socket code. (Dave Dykstra, Martin Pool.)
Fix --whole-file problem that caused it to be the default even for remote connections. (Martin Pool, Frank Schulz)
Work around bug in Mac OS X mkdir(2), which cannot handle trailing slashes. http://www.opensource.apple.com/bugs/X/BSD%20Kernel/2734739.html (Martin Pool)
Improved network error handling. (Greg A. Woods)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.4, aka "Imitation lizard skin" (13 Mar 2002)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Additional fix for zlib double-free bug. (Martin Pool, Andrew Tridgell) (CVE CAN-2002-0059)

ENHANCEMENTS:

Merge in changes from zlib 1.1.3 to zlib 1.1.4. (Jos Backus) (Note that rsync still uses a custom version of zlib; you can not just link against a system library. See zlib/README.rsync)
Additional test cases for --compress. (Martin Pool)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.3, aka "Happy 26" (11 Mar 2002)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Make sure that supplementary groups are removed from a server process after changing uid and gid. (Ethan Benson) (Debian bug #132272, CVE CAN-2002-0080)

BUG FIXES:

Fix zlib double-free bug. (Owen Taylor, Mark J Cox) (CVE CAN-2002-0059)
Fixed problem that in many cases caused the error message unexpected read size of 0 in map_ptr and resulted in the wrong data being copied.
Fixed compilation errors on some systems caused by the use of unsigned int64 in rsync.h.
Fixed problem on systems such as Sunos4 that do not support realloc on a NULL pointer; error was 'out of memory in "flist_expand"'.
Fix for rsync server processes hanging around after the client unexpectedly disconnects. (Colin Walters) (Debian bug #128632)
Cope with BSD systems on which mkdir() will not accept a trailing slash.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Merge in changes from zlib 1.1.2 to zlib 1.1.3. (Note that rsync still uses a custom version of zlib; you can not just link against a system library. See zlib/README.rsync)
Command to initiate connections is only shown with -vv, rather than -v as in 2.5.2. Output from plain -v is more similar to what was historically used so as not to break scripts that try to parse the output.
Added --no-whole-file and --no-blocking-io options (Dave Dykstra)
Made the --write-batch and --read-batch options actually work and added documentation in the manpage (Jos Backus)
If the daemon is unable to fork a child to accept a connection, print an error message. (Colin Walters)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.2 (26 Jan 2002)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

Signedness security patch from Sebastian Krahmer krahmer@suse.de -- in some cases we were not sufficiently careful about reading integers from the network.

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 26.

BUG FIXES:

Fix possible string mangling in log files.
Fix for setting local address of outgoing sockets.
Better handling of hardlinks and devices on platforms with 64-bit dev_t or ino_t.
Name resolution on machines supporting IPv6 is improved.
Fix for device nodes. (dann frazier) (Debian #129135)

ENHANCEMENTS:

With -v, rsync now shows the command used to initiate an ssh/rsh connection.
--statistics now shows memory heap usage on platforms that support mallinfo().
"The Ted T'so school of program optimization": make progress visible and people will think it's faster. (With --progress, rsync will show you how many files it has seen as it builds the file_list, giving some indication that it has not hung.)
Improvements to batch mode support. This is still experimental but testing would be welcome. (Jos Backus)
New --ignore-existing option, patch previously distributed with Vipul's Razor. (Debian #124286)

NEWS for rsync 2.5.1 (3 Jan 2002)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

Fix for segfault in --daemon mode configuration parser. (Paul Mackerras)
Correct string<->address parsing for both IPv4 and 6. (YOSHIFUJI Hideaki, SUMIKAWA Munechika and Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino)
Various fixes for IPv6 support. (Dave Dykstra)
rsync.1 typo fix. (Matt Kraai)
Test suite typo fixes. (Tom Schmidt)
rsync.1 grammar and clarity improvements. (Edward Welbourne)
Correction to ./configure tests for inet_ntop. (Jeff Garzik)

ENHANCEMENTS:

--progress and -P now show estimated data transfer rate (in a multiple of bytes/s) and estimated time to completion. (Rik Faith)
--no-detach option, required to run as a W32 service and also useful when running on Unix under daemontools, AIX's SRC, or a debugger. (Max Bowsher, Jos Backus)
Clearer error messages for some conditions.

NEWS for rsync 2.5.0 (30 Nov 2001)

Changes in this version:

PROTOCOL NUMBER:

The protocol number was changed to 25.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Martin Pool mbp@samba.org is now a co-maintainer.

NEW FEATURES:

Support for LSB-compliant packaging http://www.linuxbase.org/
Shell wildcards are allowed in auth users lines.
Merged UNC rsync+ patch to support creation of standalone patch sets. By Bert J. Dempsey and Debra Weiss, updated by Jos Backus. http://www.ils.unc.edu/i2dsi/unc_rsync+.html
IPv6 support based on a patch from KAME.net, on systems including modern versions of Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX. Also includes IPv6 compatibility functions for old OSs by the Internet Software Consortium, Paul Vixie, the OpenSSH portability project, and OpenBSD.

ENHANCEMENTS:

Include/exclude cluestick: with -vv, print out whether files are included or excluded and why.
Many error messages have more friendly explanations and more details.
Manual page improvements plus scanty protocol documentation.
When running as --daemon in the background and using a log file rsyncd.conf directive, close the log file every time it is open when going to sleep on the socket. This allows the log file to get cleaned out by another process.
Change to using libpopt rather than getopt for processing options. This makes the code cleaner and the behaviour more consistent across platforms. popt is included and built if not installed on the platform.
More details in --version, including note about whether 64-bit files, symlinks and hardlinks are supported.
MD4 code may use less CPU cycles.
Use mkstemp on systems where it is secure. If we use mktemp, explain that we do it in a secure way.
--whole-file is the default when source and target are on the local machine.

BUG FIXES:

Fix for various bugs causing rsync to hang.
Attempt to fix Large File Summit support on AIX.
Attempt to fix error handling lockup bug.
Give a non-0 exit code if any of the files we have been asked to transfer fail to transfer.
For log messages containing ridiculously long strings that might overflow a buffer rsync no longer aborts, but rather prints an ellipsis at the end of the string. (Patch from Ed Santiago.)

PLATFORMS:

Improved support for UNICOS (tested on Cray T3E and Cray SV1)
autoconf2.52 (or later) is now required to rebuild the autoconf scripts. It is not required to simply build rsync.
Platforms thought to work in this release:
- Cray SV1 UNICOS 10.0.0.8 cc
- Debian Linux 2.2 UltraSparc gcc
- Debian Linux testing/unstable ARM gcc
- FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386 cc
- FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE i386 cc
- FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE i386 cc
- HP PA-RISC HP-UX 10.20 gcc
- HP PA-RISC HP-UX 11.11 cc
- IRIX 6.5 MIPS cc
- IRIX 6.5 MIPS gcc
- Mac OS X PPC (--disable-ipv6) cc
- NetBSD 1.5 i386 gcc
- NetBSD Current i386 cc
- OpenBSD 2.5 Sparc gcc
- OpenBSD 2.9 i386 cc
- OpenBSD Current i386 cc
- RedHat 6.2 i386 gcc
- RedHat 6.2 i386 insure++
- RedHat 7.0 i386 gcc
- RedHat 7.1 i386 (Kernel 2.4.10) gcc
- Slackware 8.0 i686 (Kernel 2.4.10)
- Solaris 8 UltraSparc cc
- Solaris 8 UltraSparc gcc
- Solaris 8 i386 gcc
- SuSE 7.1 i386 gcc2.95.2
- SuSE 7.1 ppc gcc2.95.2
- i386-pc-sco3.2v5.0.5 cc
- i386-pc-sco3.2v5.0.5 gcc
- powerpc-ibm-aix4.3.3.0 cc
- i686-unknown-sysv5UnixWare7.1.0 gcc
- i686-unknown-sysv5UnixWare7.1.0 cc

TESTING:

The existing test.sh script by Phil Hands has been merged into a test framework that works from both make check and the Samba build farm.

Partial Protocol History

RELEASE DATE	VER.	DATE OF COMMIT*	PROTOCOL
?? Nov 2024	3.3.1		31
06 Apr 2024	3.3.0		31
20 Oct 2022	3.2.7		31
09 Sep 2022	3.2.6		31
14 Aug 2022	3.2.5		31
15 Apr 2022	3.2.4		31
06 Aug 2020	3.2.3		31
04 Jul 2020	3.2.2		31
22 Jun 2020	3.2.1		31
19 Jun 2020	3.2.0		31
28 Jan 2018	3.1.3		31
21 Dec 2015	3.1.2		31
22 Jun 2014	3.1.1		31
28 Sep 2013	3.1.0	31 Aug 2008	31
23 Sep 2011	3.0.9		30
26 Mar 2011	3.0.8		30
31 Dec 2009	3.0.7		30
08 May 2009	3.0.6		30
28 Dec 2008	3.0.5		30
06 Sep 2008	3.0.4		30
29 Jun 2008	3.0.3		30
08 Apr 2008	3.0.2		30
03 Apr 2008	3.0.1		30
01 Mar 2008	3.0.0	11 Nov 2006	30
06 Nov 2006	2.6.9		29
22 Apr 2006	2.6.8		29
11 Mar 2006	2.6.7		29
28 Jul 2005	2.6.6		29
01 Jun 2005	2.6.5		29
30 Mar 2005	2.6.4	17 Jan 2005	29
30 Sep 2004	2.6.3		28
30 Apr 2004	2.6.2		28
26 Apr 2004	2.6.1	08 Jan 2004	28
01 Jan 2004	2.6.0	10 Apr 2003	27 (MAX=40)
04 Dec 2003	2.5.7		26
26 Jan 2003	2.5.6		26
02 Apr 2002	2.5.5		26
13 Mar 2002	2.5.4		26
11 Mar 2002	2.5.3		26
26 Jan 2002	2.5.2	11 Jan 2002	26
03 Jan 2002	2.5.1		25
30 Nov 2001	2.5.0	23 Aug 2001	25
06 Sep 2000	2.4.6		24
19 Aug 2000	2.4.5		24
29 Jul 2000	2.4.4		24
09 Apr 2000	2.4.3		24
30 Mar 2000	2.4.2		24
30 Jan 2000	2.4.1	29 Jan 2000	24
29 Jan 2000	2.4.0	28 Jan 2000	23
25 Jan 2000	2.3.3	23 Jan 2000	22
08 Nov 1999	2.3.2	26 Jun 1999	21
06 Apr 1999	2.3.1		20
15 Mar 1999	2.3.0	15 Mar 1999	20
25 Nov 1998	2.2.1		19
03 Nov 1998	2.2.0		19
09 Sep 1998	2.1.1		19
20 Jul 1998	2.1.0		19
17 Jul 1998	2.0.19		19
18 Jun 1998	2.0.17		19
01 Jun 1998	2.0.16		19
27 May 1998	2.0.13	27 May 1998	19
26 May 1998	2.0.12		18
22 May 1998	2.0.11		18
18 May 1998	2.0.9	18 May 1998	18
17 May 1998	2.0.8		17
15 May 1998	2.0.1		17
14 May 1998	2.0.0		17
17 Apr 1998	1.7.4		17
13 Apr 1998	1.7.3		17
05 Apr 1998	1.7.2		17
26 Mar 1998	1.7.1		17
26 Mar 1998	1.7.0	26 Mar 1998	17 (MAX=30)
13 Jan 1998	1.6.9	13 Jan 1998	15 (MAX=20)

* DATE OF COMMIT is the date the protocol change was committed to version control.

@USE_GFM_PARSER@

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NEWS for rsync 3.3.1 (UNRELEASED)

Changes in this version:

SECURITY FIXES:

BUG FIXES:

INTERNAL:

DEVELOPER RELATED:

NEWS for rsync 3.3.0 (6 Apr 2024)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

ENHANCEMENTS:

DEVELOPER RELATED:

NEWS for rsync 3.2.7 (20 Oct 2022)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

ENHANCEMENTS:

PACKAGING RELATED:

NEWS for rsync 3.2.6 (9 Sep 2022)

Changes in this version:

BUG FIXES:

ENHANCEMENTS:

PACKAGING RELATED:

DEVELOPER RELATED:

NEWS for rsync 3.2.5 (14 Aug 2022)

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NEWS for rsync 3.2.4 (15 Apr 2022)

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INTERNAL

NEWS for rsync 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020)

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NEWS for rsync 3.2.2 (4 Jul 2020)

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NEWS for rsync 3.2.1 (22 Jun 2020)

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NEWS for rsync 3.2.0 (19 Jun 2020)

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NEWS for rsync 3.1.3 (28 Jan 2018)

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NEWS for rsync 3.1.2 (21 Dec 2015)

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NEWS for rsync 3.1.1 (22 Jun 2014)

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