[Dirvish] using --inplace ?

[Paul Slootman]

I was chekcing what rsync does in a typical dirvish run. Basically lots
of stat()s of the file in the destination directory, stat()s of the file
in the link-dest directory, then (when the file doesn't yet exist) an
open() for writing in the destination directory with a temporary
filename, and then a rename() at the end.

I considered that the use of a temp name and then a rename doesn't
really make much sense in dirvish usage. Since rsync 2.6.3 (30 Sep 2004)
it knows about --inplace. This will save 2 system calls per new or
changed file. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot of metadata
updates that will impact journalling filesystems.

Can anyone think of a reaon why using it would be a bad idea, besides
the fact that an older rsync version may be in place (pun intended),
in which case it should be upgraded anyway?

I've actually modified dirvish already on one of the systems I have
dirvish running on to use --inplace, I'll check tomorrow how it went.


Paul Slootman