Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Status of native Windows port?

[Josh Nisly]

Looking at this makes me remember something else that I've been meaning 
to mention on the list.

Andrew, if we want rdiff-backup to be used on Windows, I think we are 
going to have to build ssh capabilities into rdiff-backup. On unix, ssh 
is usually installed by default, and if it isn't, the package manager 
can take care of dependencies. This is not the case on Windows. Fred 
Gansevles mentioned some time ago using paramiko to provide a built-in 
ssh with rdiff-backup. I initially resisted the idea, because of the 
complexities of public keys, etc. But I now think that it is necessary. 
I don't think it is ideal to expect everyone to install putty, 
especially since it behaves in ways that break rdiff-backup (i.e. 
outputting the password prompt to stdout instead of stderr). Note that 
I'm not suggesting that we add this for unix - openssh already provides 
an excellent ssh transport, and I see no need to replace it.

Linking in paramiko and its dependency pycrypto will add about about 
1-3MB to the executable. This is unfortunate, but I think it would be 
worth it.

If people are interested, I can submit a patch to add support for this. 
Andrew, what do you think?

Thanks,
JoshN

ahd71 wrote:
> I finally found out how to use the new binary with a remote linux host and 
> documented it in 
> http://wiki.rdiff-backup.org/wiki/index.php/BackupFromWindowsToLinux
>