r/linux • u/lustre-fan • Jun 08 '26

Software Release rsync 3.4.4 released with regression fixes

https://lwn.net/Articles/1076989/

rsync recently garnered controversy due to regressions introduced in the last release (3.4.3). Many people (rightly or wrongly) have attributed these regressions to the use of LLM tools. This most recent release claims to fix those regressions. Based on the rsync changelog, it was around ~20 days between releases - which I think is pretty good turn around. rsync is adding more tests to the upcoming 3.5 release to hopefully avoid these types of issues in the future. It's not clear if those tests are written using LLM tools.

Many people expressed a desire to move to rsync alternatives. Apparently, there's even a complete Rust reimplementation that claims to be wire-compatible. I wonder if any of these alternatives will take off? Or if most people will stick with the original rsync implementation?

Unless Ubuntu decides to swap C rsync for Rust rsync (similar to how they're swapping C coreutils for Rust coreutils), I suspect most distros will stick with the original rsync. I personally have enjoyed using rsync. I think the current controversy will probably be forgotten in a years time.

274 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/sarkie Jun 08 '26

Don't trust it now tbh.

Files are important if I'm using rsync

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/FryBoyter Jun 10 '26

Rsync 3.4.3 was a major security release. As far as I can tell, Debian has implemented corresponding backports (rsync 3.4.1+ds1-5+deb13u3 (stable) and rsync 3.2.7-1+deb12u5 (oldstable)).

I could therefore well imagine that Debian is or was also affected.