rsync - Feb 2014 - [Bug 10449] New: Allow testing of supported parameter(s)

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10449

           Summary: Allow testing of supported parameter(s)
           Product: rsync
           Version: 3.1.0
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5
         Component: core
        AssignedTo: wayned at samba.org
        ReportedBy: me at haravikk.com
         QAContact: rsync-qa at samba.org


In newer versions of rsync there are many desirable features that simply
aren't
available in older versions, but unfortunately some systems continue to be
bundled older versions of rsync.


I'd like to recommend a special rsync mode which will attempt to perform a
compatibility check for particular features. Of course this will only work for
newer versions, but at least it should then fail when used with an older
version and thus still provide useful feedback.

Quite simply I'd like to suggest either an extension of the --help or
--version
flag, whereby any additional parameters are treated as features to be tested
for. If source and destination parameters are also provided, then these will be
used for determining which features are available between the source and target
specifically (i.e - it will check with a remote system if able to do-so).


For example:
rsync --version --delete-during --ignore-case ~/Foo me at bar.com:/Foo

This would attempt to determine whether the "delete-during" and
"ignore-case"
switches are available for a transfer between the local volume and me at
bar.com.
If all listed features are supported then it will return a particular status
code (for compatibility with current versions this shouldn't be 0),
otherwise
it will return a different status and will print to stdout a list of
unsupported features, so the script knows not to use these when performing the
actual transfer operation.

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