On 10/30/17 12:31 PM, Russ Housley wrote:
The SIDR WG wanted to reference rsync, but there was no stable reference that described the protocol, only the code. A document was written to specify the rsync URL, and they is the only thing that is normatively referenced. A reference to the protocol would be better, and I hope this BCP would allow that to happen in the future.
When you say, “the protocol”, to what are you referring?
The rsync protocol.
Russ
rsync is an ALGORITHM for synchronizing copies of files/directories, it
has an implicit protocol for moving bytes between two copies, but it
doesn't seem to be well documented
there have been implementations of the algorithm over various underlying
transfer protocols - for example, zsync claims to use the rsync
algorithm over HTTP (never used it myself)
and yes - it would be nice to have a standard protocol for
file/directory synchronization (it would also be nice to standardize
things like exchanges between instances of distributed version control
systems - for example the way subversion uses WebDAV & DeltaV)
somehow application layer developers don't think in terms of protocols,
they keep coming back to client-server models & software-oriented APIs,
rather than protocols
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra