Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Suggestion for documentation change

[Andrew Ferguson]

dean gaudet wrote:
> sounds like the bug is that rdiff-backup decides there's a metadata change 
> and stores an almost-empty .diff.gz file even though it's not required.  
> even though the metadata change is innocuous...

I think there could be a reason for the almost-empty .diff.gz file, but
it depends on whether we view metadata changes as true changes to a
file. That is, do we truly want to see that a file 'changed' at a
specific backup time, or do we just want that implicit in the metadata?

This is connected to the fact that you can do restores with rdiff-backup
of the form:

rdiff-backup
/backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/path/to/file.<time>.diff.gz
/path/to/file

If we stop creating the .diff.gz files for metadata-only changes, we
break this behavior for the case when you want to restore on one side or
the the other of a metadata-only change.

Does this make sense?

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Ferguson - address@hidden