Re: Bugs and features

[Mark . Burgess]

On 22 Sep, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> Mark.Burgess@iu.hio.no writes:
> 
>>> 4. Big change! How about using the rsync algorithm for remote
>>> copies. I believe an rsync library is available. Either that, or
>>> simply use rsyncd as the server instead of cfd. Relegate cfd to be
>>> the remote invocation agent for cfrun only.
> 
>>
>> Just briefly:
>>
>> Recent independent measurments showed that cfengine file copying
>> is faster than rsync, unless encryption is used .. which is madness
>> for most applications.
> 
> That's fine, but why reinvent the wheel?  rsync is a robust,
> well-tested protocol, and a lot of sites already use it.  At our site
> we have rsync shortcuts for almost everything, for instance.

Unless you are distributing and changing software often and in large
quantities, you won't gain anything from rsync. When file copying
was added to cfengine, rsync was only just invented and I didn't
know about it. I don't use it, even now, because the protocol (although
clever) is not reall suited to the idea of cfengine -- that you don't
do anything unless you have to. Rsync takes a long time to decide
and doesn't really fit in the cfengine's idea of convergence. That's
why I don't use it, and will not use it in the future.
 
> Maybe a rsync section in cfengine, similar to the copy section, would
> be appropriate?  That way you can have the cfd copy, but people can
> use rsync from inside cfengine as well.  Since rsync options are
> consistent across platforms, this should be pretty easy to do as just
> a command execution.

 What's the point? If you wnat to use rsync, use rsync. If you
want fast, straightforward and efficient, use cfengine.
You can always run rsync as a shellcommand.... 

M

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