Note: Jarsync is no longer being actively developed. It may be picked up again, but not now.

Introduction • Status • Download • CVS • Mailing Lists • Documentation

Introduction

Jarsync is (will be) a Java implementation of the rsync algorithm, a cache-free delta compression algorithm for fast file transfer across a network. Its aim is to provide a high-quality free-software delta compression library for the Java platform, similar in spirit to librsync.

Our SourceForge project page is at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/jarsync. There is also a parallel project I am working on, the Hopefully Uncomprehensible Shell, a Java implementation of a secure shell client, which will eventually allow Jarsync to invoke a remote session over SSH programmatically.

If you want to contact me about Jarsync, feel free to send a message to rsdio@metastatic.org, or post questions to one of the mailing lists.

Status

The base API is in place, and tests have shown it to work and be compatible with the form of the rsync algorithm used in rsync and rdiff. The library seems fairly stable, and changes to it will likely be only minor.

The client and server are not yet finished, but a significant amount of work has been done on them. The client is the furthest along, and the current release emulates the most basic functionality of the rsync program.

There is also a sub-project, Vwdiff, which uses Jarsync to implement a visual differencer.

Download

These files have been signed by Casey Marshall with the GNU Privacy Guard.

CVS

You can check out the current CVS sources using:

% cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.jarsync.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jarsync login
% cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.jarsync.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jarsync co jarsync

Mailing Lists

The mailing lists for this project are:

• Jarsync-announce: A read-only low-volume list for announcements of new releases and important news.
• Jarsync-users: Semi-technical discussion for the end-user tools, when they are written.
• Jarsync-devel: Technical discussion about the development of Jarsync. Bug reports, patches, feature suggestions, or licensing questions should go here.

Documentation

The API JavaDocs generated from the cvs sources are available.

For an introduction to the rsync algorithm, see the original rsync technical report, or for a more in-depth discussion, go read Andrew Tridgell's PhD thesis.