# rsync deprecated?

7 messages from 2008-12-17 to 2008-12-20. Participants: Markus Heidelberg, Junio C Hamano, Mike Hommey, demerphq, Miklos Vajna.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/16776

## Markus Heidelberg, 2008-12-17 23:41

Subject: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <200812180041.10312.markus.heidelberg@web.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200812180041.10312.markus.heidelberg%40web.de

```
Hi,

in the "Merging external work" section of the gitcore-tutorial it is
stated that the rsync transport is deprecated. The description was added
in commit 914328a (Update tutorial., 2005-08-30) together with the
"deprecated" note. Having never heard/read this before and since this
commit is quite old, I wonder if it is still the case or there was a
solution for this problem.

Markus

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2008-12-18 03:20

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <7vljuei2xw.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vljuei2xw.fsf%40gitster.siamese.dyndns.org
In-Reply-To: <200812180041.10312.markus.heidelberg@web.de>

```
Markus Heidelberg <markus.heidelberg@web.de> writes:

> in the "Merging external work" section of the gitcore-tutorial it is
> stated that the rsync transport is deprecated. The description was added
> in commit 914328a (Update tutorial., 2005-08-30) together with the
> "deprecated" note. Having never heard/read this before and since this
> commit is quite old, I wonder if it is still the case or there was a
> solution for this problem.

Sorry, I do not quite understand what you perceive as "this problem".

It has been deprecated for too long a time.  Maybe it is time to remove
the support, instead of carrying the deprecated command forever?  Is that
the problem you are talking about?

I tend to agree that rsync transport way outlived its usefulness, and not
maintained at all.  There may be unnoticed and undiagnosed bugs lurking,
but nobody knows about it because nobody uses it.

But the next release (1.6.1) won't be a good timing for removal.  Perhaps
we can make an announcement now that it will be removed in a future major
update, and actually remove it in 1.7.0 or so.

```

## Markus Heidelberg, 2008-12-18 04:13

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <200812180513.51107.markus.heidelberg@web.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200812180513.51107.markus.heidelberg%40web.de
In-Reply-To: <7vljuei2xw.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

```
Junio C Hamano, 18.12.2008:
> Markus Heidelberg <markus.heidelberg@web.de> writes:
> 
> > in the "Merging external work" section of the gitcore-tutorial it is
> > stated that the rsync transport is deprecated. The description was added
> > in commit 914328a (Update tutorial., 2005-08-30) together with the
> > "deprecated" note. Having never heard/read this before and since this
> > commit is quite old, I wonder if it is still the case or there was a
> > solution for this problem.
> 
> Sorry, I do not quite understand what you perceive as "this problem".

The problem described in the rsync section in gitcore-tutorial: 

  "can produce unexpected results when you download from the public
  repository while the repository owner is uploading into it via rsync
  transport. Most notably, it could update the files under refs/ which
  holds the object name of the topmost commits before uploading the
  files in objects/ - the downloader would obtain head commit object
  name while that object itself is still not available in the
  repository."

I only thought about git itself uploading into and downloading from the
repository with push and fetch, respectively. And wondered where the
problem with the order of refs and objects was. But I just realized, it
can of course be uploaded with plain rsync, too.

> It has been deprecated for too long a time.  Maybe it is time to remove
> the support, instead of carrying the deprecated command forever?  Is that
> the problem you are talking about?

Yes, this is the answer to my question. I thought maybe it's not
deprecated anymore, because the only place where it is called so, is
gitcore-tutorial.

```

## Mike Hommey, 2008-12-20 08:15

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <20081220081511.GA28212@glandium.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20081220081511.GA28212%40glandium.org
In-Reply-To: <7vljuei2xw.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

```
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 07:20:59PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Markus Heidelberg <markus.heidelberg@web.de> writes:
> 
> > in the "Merging external work" section of the gitcore-tutorial it is
> > stated that the rsync transport is deprecated. The description was added
> > in commit 914328a (Update tutorial., 2005-08-30) together with the
> > "deprecated" note. Having never heard/read this before and since this
> > commit is quite old, I wonder if it is still the case or there was a
> > solution for this problem.
> 
> Sorry, I do not quite understand what you perceive as "this problem".
> 
> It has been deprecated for too long a time.  Maybe it is time to remove
> the support, instead of carrying the deprecated command forever?  Is that
> the problem you are talking about?
> 
> I tend to agree that rsync transport way outlived its usefulness, and not
> maintained at all.  There may be unnoticed and undiagnosed bugs lurking,
> but nobody knows about it because nobody uses it.

Something that could well make this transport be maintained would be to
make it share code/internal API with the "local file transport".
Ideally, http, rsync and file could all share the same basis, and
ensuring the file transport to be functional would pretty much guarantee
all work.

Anyways, I'm not the right person to say that, as I've been failing to
deliver a beginning of such code for a year, now (damn, time goes too
fast).

Maybe libgit2 could be a good occasion to start some API like this,
though.

Mike

```

## demerphq, 2008-12-20 10:12

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <9b18b3110812200212o46edf51eoaff43ec1b8fc3913@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/9b18b3110812200212o46edf51eoaff43ec1b8fc3913%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <20081220081511.GA28212@glandium.org>

```
2008/12/20 Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 07:20:59PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Markus Heidelberg <markus.heidelberg@web.de> writes:
>>
>> > in the "Merging external work" section of the gitcore-tutorial it is
>> > stated that the rsync transport is deprecated. The description was added
>> > in commit 914328a (Update tutorial., 2005-08-30) together with the
>> > "deprecated" note. Having never heard/read this before and since this
>> > commit is quite old, I wonder if it is still the case or there was a
>> > solution for this problem.
>>
>> Sorry, I do not quite understand what you perceive as "this problem".
>>
>> It has been deprecated for too long a time.  Maybe it is time to remove
>> the support, instead of carrying the deprecated command forever?  Is that
>> the problem you are talking about?
>>
>> I tend to agree that rsync transport way outlived its usefulness, and not
>> maintained at all.  There may be unnoticed and undiagnosed bugs lurking,
>> but nobody knows about it because nobody uses it.
>
> Something that could well make this transport be maintained would be to
> make it share code/internal API with the "local file transport".
> Ideally, http, rsync and file could all share the same basis, and
> ensuring the file transport to be functional would pretty much guarantee
> all work.

Just for the record: cloning via rsync is broken currently. I reported
this actually only shortly before Junio made this comment. Apparently
the code to copy across HEAD is missing from the rsync code, although
it is present for HTTP code.

Is there a bug tracking tool that git uses? I asked on #git on irc and
they said to just mail the list, but ive not seen any response to my
mail at all and the timing of Junios comment makes me wonder if my
report was seen by list regulars at all.

cheers,
Yves



-- 
perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"

```

## Miklos Vajna, 2008-12-20 17:02

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <20081220170219.GS21154@genesis.frugalware.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20081220170219.GS21154%40genesis.frugalware.org
In-Reply-To: <9b18b3110812200212o46edf51eoaff43ec1b8fc3913@mail.gmail.com>

```
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 11:12:11AM +0100, demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a bug tracking tool that git uses? I asked on #git on irc and
> they said to just mail the list, but ive not seen any response to my
> mail at all and the timing of Junios comment makes me wonder if my
> report was seen by list regulars at all.

You did the right thing, just nobody who read your mail had enough
time/knowledge/motivation to reply something constructive for you.

Similar to patches, I think if you get no answer in 3 days, you can try
to reply to your own mail, bringing the topic up again.

```

## demerphq, 2008-12-20 17:08

Subject: Re: rsync deprecated?
Message-ID: <9b18b3110812200908o5f162218hceee0e82a3265993@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/9b18b3110812200908o5f162218hceee0e82a3265993%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <20081220170219.GS21154@genesis.frugalware.org>

```
2008/12/20 Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org>:
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 11:12:11AM +0100, demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a bug tracking tool that git uses? I asked on #git on irc and
>> they said to just mail the list, but ive not seen any response to my
>> mail at all and the timing of Junios comment makes me wonder if my
>> report was seen by list regulars at all.
>
> You did the right thing, just nobody who read your mail had enough
> time/knowledge/motivation to reply something constructive for you.
>
> Similar to patches, I think if you get no answer in 3 days, you can try
> to reply to your own mail, bringing the topic up again.

Ah, yes. Being new on this list it is all too easy to suffer from
Warnock Dilemma.

cheers,
Yves



-- 
perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"

```
