Re: rsync to copy files?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > an easy way to replace 'install' is to overwrite the INSTALL variable
> > temporarily (at least with gnu make):
> >
> >   make INSTALL=myinstall install
>
> Yes, I know, thank you.  I was not referring to a particular way to
> install a particular software, but rather to the way the Automake
> install rules should work.  Say, I test a package in a second build
> tree with different compile options, and then decide to re-install
> the old package from the first build tree, I do not want to end up
> with a mixed installation even if I forgot to 'make uninstall' in
> between.  I just would not expect 'make install' to behave that way.
>
> Does that make the intention of my comment clear?

Yes, very.

> From comments posted it seems that we can summarize:

  o Any alternative to install/cp should not be the default, even if
    the necessary tools are found since performance improvements
    depend on the relative performance of the filesystems involved
    (and there may be no improvement at all if the file must
    actually be copied and both files are on local disk).

  o The replacement must reliably update the file if it has changed.

I believe that rsync looks at the absolute time stamp (with optional 
fuzz factor) while it seems that GNU 'cp -c' only checks the source 
file's date to see if it is newer and does not check file size.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen