Here we list planned and imagined improvements to Unison.  Ones that we
regard as most important are marked with *.  See the file BUGS.txt for a
list of currently open bugs.

###########################################################################

DEFINITELY BEFORE NEXT RELEASE
==============================

[zy] The "Zhe: wrong assumption" errors for diff and merge is embarassing!
     -- corrected.
	
[zy] ignore path processing during directory copying doesn't seem to work
     -- There's no bug, actually.  From a dream?

[zy] Fix makefile
     -- Done

[zy] Finish adding comments to source code

[zy] Add something to docs about how to use 'rootalias'.  Include an
     explanation of the semantics, a couple of examples, and a suggestion
     for how to debug what it's doing by turning on appropriate debugging
     flags.  (And maybe we should actually make the debug output there a
     bit more verbose?)

[zy] Find out whether it's possible to subscribe by something like
     sending an empty email to unison-users-subscribe@groups.yahoo.com 
     If so, document it in the manual and on the index page.

[bcp] docs
  - document good trick: use -1 switch to ssh if the paths are set up wrong
    on the remote host
  - should say whether trailing slashes are ok for paths; should say
    that leading slashes are illegal.
    ===> check
  - not so clear what you have to do with a Regex to match a directory
    and all its subfiles: foo or foo/ or foo/.* ?
    ===> the first. document it.  (Does foo/ match foo?  I don't think so.
         Document, one way or the other.)
  - what happens when files are included whose parent dirs are
    excluded? (With Regex?  With multiple Path and Name?)
    ===> document
  - the documentation is very good, but i couldn't find a description of how 
    to respond to the prompts in the textual ui. is that explained 
    somewhere? a few typos i noticed: "with t fast", "nison", "off of".

[bcp] look at bcp's unison.todo mail folder and move tasks into here

** The "total size transferred" in the GTK UI should be stored in an
   Int64; otherwise large transfers will overflow it.
   ==> change Util.filesize to int64 (this seems like a "right thing",
       but seems to cause an "out of memory" error on the first sync of
       my full replica).  Should try this again.   -BCP
   ==> even if we can't do this change, we should at least recognize when
       filesizes are too big to represent and generate a sensible error
       message! 

** Fix index.tex (stable not getting done correctly; wrong pointer to
   contact us)

IF POSSIBLE BEFORE NEXT RELEASE
===============================

** Suggestion for extending merge functionality
     - add a new kind of preference -- a conditional stringlist preference
     - in the preference file, each value looks like either
            prefname = string
       or
            prefname = string WHEN Path PPPPP 
            prefname = string WHEN Name XXXXX
            prefname = string WHEN Regex XXXXX
     - when we look up such a preference, we provide a current path, and it
       returns the one that matches the current path, if any 

** Would be good to (optionally) change the semantics of the "backup"
   functionality, so that Unison would not insist on making a *full*
   backup of the whole replica, but just do so lazily.  (I.e., it would
   not make backups when files get put into the archive, but only when
   they actually get changed.)

** Would also be nice to allow the backup preference to be set
   differently on different hosts -- so that all the backups could be
   kept on one side (if there is no space on the other side, e.g.).  The
   obvious way to do this is to add a switch like '-suppressbackupsonroot
   BLAH' but this feels a bit ad hoc.  It would be nicer to decide, in
   general, which preferences can sensibly have different settings on
   different roots (e.g., the location of the archive dir, ...) and
   provide a general mechanism for setting them per-host.

** Would be nice to transfer directories "incrementally" rather than
   atomically (i.e., if Unison is interrupted during the transfer of a
   directory, the partially-transferred directory should persist).  Is
   this allowed by the specification?  (If so, then it should just become
   the default behavior.)

** ~/foo seems to work on the command line but not in root = ~/foo in the
   config file.
   ===> Would be nice to support ~ internally

** unison -help doesn't go to stdout so it's hard to pipe it into less

** The new backup mechanism should be refined so that it does not insist on
   making a full backup every time it changes the archive -- e.g., in
   particular, when the files are actually equal.

> In menu Actions
>  - show Diff applies to the current line, while
>  - revert to unision's recommandation applies to all lines 
> Should be clearer and/or homogeneous behavior.
> I would also like to have "revert to unision's recommandation" for the
> current line. 

Auto-termination of the graphical UI (switch-controlled)
  * Unison starts in the usual way and checks for changes
  * If there are no conflicts, it proceeds without waiting for confirmation
  * If there *are* conflicts, it waits for instructions, just like now
  * In either case, when it's finished transferring the changes, it quits

improve error reporting when Unison is started with different versions of
client and server

should strip symbols from binary files in 'make exportnative'

The archive should indicate whether it is case-dependant or not.

When loading archives, one should check that they have the same checksum.
  ==> [What does that mean?]

in gtk ui, display green checkmark next to finished items even if their
  direction indicates a conflict; do not list such items as "skipped" at
  the end

In the text ui, put a "failure and skip count" at the end, like the GTK ui
In both UIs, show how many bytes/files were successfully transferred at the end

giving a -path preference whose parent dir doesn't exist currently causes
  Unison to abort with a fatal error.  Would be better if it just
  signalled an error for that file.

** no spec for escaping regexp chars; spaces? newlines? tabs? others?
   mechanism for getting the list of files from another program (plugin)?
   ===> needs to be documented (look at rx.ml)

** seems not to recognise ignores when they are inside a path that has
   just been added.
===> Jamey claims that if we add a new directory, some of whose children
     are ignored, then when this new dir is propagated, also the ignored
     stuff gets copied  (if this is true, then it's probably a bug in
     update.ml) 

** if you abort, it gets confused about the status of
   ~/.unison/default.prf on the next run sometimes.
   ===> We can't figure out how this might have happened.  Would probably
   indicate a serious bug, though, if true.

** if unison is dynamically linked, can we check from the -version
that all the libraries are present and working?  can we check the
status of threading?  mention in the manual what happens if one side
is threaded and the other is not.

** what happens when we ssh through loopback and sync the same
   directory?
   ===> Needs to be thought about.  In particular, what is the name of the
        archive in this case?  Could they ever be exactly the same?
   ===> Try it and see.

we should reload the current preference file (if it's changed, at least)
  when we restart

###########################################################################

                                WISH LIST
                                =========
          (good ideas that we're NOT working on right at the moment)

FRESHLY ADDED
=============

I'm watching it sync a very large file that I don't want anyway, and I'm in
  a hurry. I'd like a way to say "forget that file, I don't care about it, go
  on to the next one you have to sync". Doesn't sound hard...?
  [Perdita Stevens, Perdita.Stevens@dcs.ed.ac.uk, Mar 14 2002]

If a root resides on a `host' with an ever and unpredictably changing
  host name (like a public login cluster with dozens of machines and a
  shared file system), listing each possible host name for this root is
  not feasible.  The ability of specifing patterns in rootaliases would
  help a lot in this case.  I'm thinking of something like this:

  rootalias = //.*//afs/cern.ch/user/n/nagya ->
  //cern.ch//afs/cern.ch/user/n/nagya
  [NAGY Andras <nagya@inf.elte.hu>, March 12]

The -sortbysize is nice, but what I would really like is a -limitbysize.
  When I'm connected over a modem line, I would like not to transfer the
  larger files that need synchronization. That can wait until I am
  connected via a faster connection. What I presently do is allow unison
  to run in -sortbysize mode, and abort once I have all my little, more
  important files. -limitbysize should simply filter the list of transfer
  to only those that are below the threshold size. The syntax is
  obvious... It should be -limitbysize xxx, where xxx is the size
  (preferably in kb, but bytes will do as well).

"Quit" during synchronization should abort all current operations (so
  that temporary files are deleted) before exiting.

Make sure that no filesystem check is missing in the transport agent.
  ===> What does this mean?

Unison's gui offers an `Actions' menu with a variety of features
  regarding preferences.  I would love to see an action with the following
  semantics: if the two files differ only in their modification time,
  prefer the older modification time.
  ===> This would be easy to add, but I am beginning to worry that we are
       getting too many funny little switches like this.  We should think
       about them all together and make sure they make sense.

Would be nice to have the Unison log file relative to my home directory,
 like this 
       logfile = ~/.unision/log
  or
       logfile = $HOME/.unision/log
  (We should do this for *all* files that the user specifies.)

It would be nice if Unison could have the "power" to copy write-protected
   files, maybe as an option.

Fast update checking would be cool... Some resources:
   FAM (used in Enlightenment) 
   dnotify (linux 2.4)
   BSD kqueue
   the "VFS stacking layer" implemented by a guy at Columbia

Update checking over NFS might be *much* faster if we use only relative
  pathnames (absolute paths may require an RPC per level!?)

On Saul, Unison seems to use HUGE amounts of memory (250Mb resident),
  while on my laptop it's much less.  WTF?

SMALL FUNCTIONALITY IMPROVEMENTS
================================

*** Currently, if a file changes on either side between the initial update
    detection and the time when the transport module tries to propagate
    changes, the transport is aborted.  But if the change occurred on the
    replica that is being used as the source for the transfer (which will
    be the common case!), then there is no reason to abort -- we should
    just propagate the newest version.

*** When unison notices lock files in the archive directory, it should
    offer to delete them *for* the user, rather than forcing the user to
    delete them manually.

** [A good idea for the ssh prompt issue...]  I'm not sure why you would
  need a C implementation; you could do the same thing in CAML that expect
  does: allocate a PTY, start up ssh on that, and interact with it. On
  Windows, you can probably do the same with the Win32 console API,
  although I don't see why such an improvement needs to work uniformly
  across all platforms to be useful.  [Note that allocating PTYs is not
  very portable, but we could at least try allocating one and see if
  something useful comes back...]

** An idea for the interface to the external merge functionality:
  created a general mechanism for invoking external functionality...
    - in profile, declare a command of the form
           key M = external "merge ##1 ##2 ###" --> overwriting originals
      (concrete syntax open to discussion!).  Main parts are
         - what key to bind it to in the UI(s)
         - the command line to start up
         - variables (##1 and ##2) for the local and remote files
           (the remote file will automatically be copied to a local temp
           file, if this variable is used)
         - a variable (###) for a temporary output file
         - an indication of what to do with this output file
           (or maybe this could be automatic)
         - (should also indicate which machine(s) to run the command on?)

** small additions to merge functionality:
  - if the external merge program *deletes* one of the files it is given,
    Unison should interpret this as "Copy the other file onto this location
    (instead of merging)".  This will allow some other interesting 
    functionality, e.g. external programs that may decide to keep both
    versions by moving one of them out of the way (mh-rename).
  - the invocation of the external 'diff' program should be selectable
    using the same conventions as the 'merge' program
  - would be nice to be able to invoke DIFFERENT merge programs
    depending on paths

** It would be nice to have a "merge" command (similar to "diff" in the
   UI) that invokes a user-specified merging tool (which one could
   perhaps depend on a regex matched against the file's pathname) on the
   two versions, allows the user to merge as desired, and writes the
   merged version (if any) over both of the originals.  (There are lots of
   merge tools that could be used with this -- e.g., kfilemerge, ediff,
   xdiff, mgdiff, kmerge, etc.  But I had trouble finding even one that I could
   install cleanly on my linux box.  How hard would it be to write our
   own?  Then we could unify the merge and diff functionality, it would be
   more portable, etc.) 
   ==> Other potential merge tools: 
     idiff [BCP has a copy of the code for idiff that Norman sent.]  

** Allow 'default.prf' in place of 'default' for profile names

** [dlux@dlux.hu, Feb 2002] For some apps (e.g., some mail readers?),
  putting temp files in the same directory as the file we're about to
  overwrite is bad/dangerous. Some alternatives that we could
  consider... 
    -  Add a configuration option for temporary directory and notice the
       user about the volume restrictions in the docs and then if the user
       does not consider it, then we use a non-atomic (copy + unlink)
       rename. In an ideal environment (where the user consider this
       restriction), it makes possible to sync a maildir folder while it is
       online!
    -  An even better solution: One more temporary file step. If the user
       sets the temporary directory, then we synchronize the files to that
       directory, and if the file is downloaded/uploaded fully, then we move
       it to a tempfile into the target directory (with .unison.tmp
       extension) and then rename it into the final name.

* Maybe we should write debugging and tracing information to stdout
  instead of stderr?

* URI pathname syntax
  Why is the following command wrong?
     unison -servercmd `which unison` /usr/local ssh://labrador/usr/local
  It took me three tries and careful reading of the documentation to
  figure it out.  I don't have any good suggestions here, other than
  that I think the whole issue of relative vs absolute pathnames needs
  serious thought.  I think the current interfaces do not work very
  well.  One possibility that I will float is that you invent a special
  character string to refer to the root of synchronization.
  E.g., interpret ~ as $HOME in roots.
  --
  Also: we should add the file:// syntax to URIs...
    file://C:/Necula    (C:/Necula on the local file system)
    file:////share/subdir  (//share/subdir as from the point of view of
                          the local file system)
    unison://host///share/subdir
  -- 
  Should local roots in a profile be canonized?
    Right now, we can have a relative root in the profile.  This
    is going to be a problem if unison is started in a different
    directory.

* Now that we always keep fingerprints in the archive, we should
  re-fingerprint "possibly updated" files during update detection.  (If we
  do this, then we can completely eliminate false positives.  This, in
  turn, will allow us to give a more demanding specification.)

* At the moment, if Unison is interrupted during a non-atomic operation
  on the file system, the user has to clean things up manually, following
  the instructions in the the recovery log.  We should do that for them.
  (This is actually a bit tricky, since we need to be careful about what
  might happen if unison crashes during recovery, etc.  The best way to
  accomplish this would be to write a general logging/recovery facility
  in OCaml.)

* Dealing with ACLs: Maybe this is what we should do actually.  We could
  specify a user (and similarly a group) to unison.  It would be
  interpreted in a special way: if a file is owned by this user, unison
  will rather consider that the owner of the file is undefined.  So, when
  a file owned by an unkown user is synchronized, the file owner is set
  to the default user.  Then, on the next synchronizations, unison will
  consider that the owner has not been propagated and try again.  [Should
  be easy once the reconciler is made more modular]

* The -terse preference should suppress more (in fact, almost all)
  messages in the text ui.  See Dale Worley's message for a detailed
  proposal. 

[From Yan Seiner]
  Can unison modify the (*nix) environment to show the
  ip/name/some_other_id of the system making the connection?  This would
  help tremendously.
  For example, vtun does this:
  ---
  root      6319  0.0  0.6  1984  852 ?        S<   Aug27   0:37 vtund[s]:
  bgsludge tun tun10
  root      6324  0.0  0.6  1984  852 ?        S<   Aug27   2:00 vtund[s]:
  cardinal tun tun0
  root     17001  0.0  0.6  1984  848 ?        S<   Aug27   0:05 vtund[s]:
  wtseller tun tun11
  root     20100  0.0  0.6  1984  852 ?        S<   Aug28   0:02 vtund[s]:
  cardridg tun tun1
  ----
  So I know I have four sessions, to each named machine, and I know
  immediately who is connected and who is not.  If I have to kill a
  session, I don't kill the wrong one.

add a switch '-logerrors' that makes unison log error messages to a
  separate file in addition to the standard logfile

Dale Worley's suggestion for relocating archives:
  >   You're right: it's not all that tricky.  So would you be happy if you
  >   could run unison in a special mode like this
  >       unison -relocate //old-host1//path1 //old-host2//path2 \
  >                        //new-host1//path1 //new-host2//path2
  >   (where all the hosts and paths are normalized) and it would move the
  >   archives for you on both machines?
  Actually, I think that what you want is for the user to specify the
  old paths in *normalized* form and the new paths in *non-normalized*
  form.  That is, unison uses the old paths literally as provided by the
  user, but it applies the usual normalization algorithm to the new
  paths.
  This may sound strange, but I think that it's the Right Thing:
  - There is no guarantee that the normalization algorithm, applied to
    the old paths as the user used to specify them, normalizes to the
    the normalized paths that are recorded in the archive.  Indeed,
    there may no longer be *any* path which normalizes to the recorded
    paths.
  - The user can extract the normalized old paths from the second line
    of the archive files.  This is clumsy, but reliable.  And we don't
    intend the user to relocate an archive very often.
  - But for the new paths, you want to normalize what the user supplies,
    because he doesn't know in advance how Unison is going to normalize
    the new paths, and may well specify them incorrectly.  That would
    leave him with a relocated archive that he might not be able to use
    at all.
  You might want to put quotes around the pathnames in the second line
  of the archive, since MS-Windows directory names can contain spaces,
  etc.

For safety...
  - Add a preference 'maxdelete' taking an integer parameter, default 100
    (or perhaps even less -- keeping it fairly small will help naive users
    avoid shooting themselves in the foot).  A negative number means
    skip this check (i.e., infinity).
  - When the transport subsystem gets control (i.e., just after the user
    says 'go' to the user interface, when not running in batch mode)
    it first checks the number of files that are going to be deleted
    (including all the contents of any directories that are marked for
    deletion).  If it is more than maxdelete (and maxdelete is
    positive), then...
       - If we're in batch mode (batch=true), we halt without doing
         anything.
       - If we're not in batch mode, we display a warning message and
         make the user confirm.  (If they do *not* confirm, it would be
         nice to dump them back into the user interface again, but this
         would require a little rewriting of our control flow.)
  - Would also be nice to include a display in the UI someplace that says
    how many files are to be deleted/changed/created plus how many bytes
    to be transferred, and a warning signal (display in red or something)
    if these exceed the current setting of maxdelete.

Might be nice to provide an option that says "if you're propagating a
  newly created directory and something goes wrong with something inside
  it, just ignore the file that failed and keep going with the rest of
  the directory."  [We probably don't want to continue in all cases (for
  instance, when the disk is full)]

Would be nice to be able to run unison in a special mode like this
    unison -relocate //old-host1//path1 //old-host2//path2 \
                     //new-host1//path1 //new-host2//path2
  (where all the hosts and paths are canonized) and have it move the
  archives for you on both machines?

It would be nice if unison had a tool by which it could regenerate all
  the MD5 sums and compare them to what it has stored, then produce a list
  of files that are different.  I obviously cannot count on file size and
  date in  this case; those may not have changed but the contents may be
  corrupt.

If the connection to the server goes away and then comes back up, it
  would be nice if Unison would transparently re-establish it (at least,
  when this makes sense!)

If we synchronize a path whose parent doesn't exist in one replica, we'll
  fail.  Might be nicer to create the parent path if needed.

maybe put backup files somewhere other than in the replica (e.g. in
  $HOME/tmp, or controlled by preference)

Better documentation of the -backups flag, and a way to expire old backups

Add a preference that makes the reconciler ignore prefs-only differences 
  between files (not updating the archive, though -- just suppressing
  the difference -- will this slow things down too much??  Maybe it needs
  to happen in the update detector, before things are transmitted across
  the network.)

Perhaps we should interpret both / and the local separator as path
  separators, i.e., under Windows / and \, under Mac / and :, and under
  Unix just /.  For Windows this will be fine, since / is not allowed in
  filenames.

Maybe have an option to tell do not transfer toto.dvi if toto.tex exists (or
  toto.ps if toto.dvi): something like
          Ignore .dvi If .tex
  ===> This is not a good idea -- would give different ignore results on
  the two machines.  But maybe a variant would work:
    - Have an option to execute a command if a given file exist like
            Execute rm core If core
            Execute make clean If Makefile

We should put in a preference that forces Unison to do really safe update
  detection (with fingerprinting), even on Unix systems.  (Maybe just for
  some paths?)

Maybe we should never emit a conflict for modtimes; instead, we just
  propagate the largest one.

USER INTERFACE
==============

* Would be nice to have a keystroke in the UI that means 'add the current
  directory to the set of ignore patterns.'

* In the text UI, during the transport phase, print each file being
  transferred on *one* line, with an arrow to indicate which way (and
  dropping the explicit indication of which host from and to).  The
  logfile should be more explicit.

* The unison gui currently displays a percentage completion in the lower right
  corner.  I would find it comforting if it would also display an effective
  bandwidth there, i.e., how many bits per second are flowing through the
  transport layer?  I make this request because owing to a hardware 
  catastrophe, I have just started using Unison through the phone lines, and
  it seems to do nothing for a long period of time.  I don't know whether
  to blame the cheap modem, the cheap ISP, or whether Unison simply isn't
  telling me that bits are flowing through the wire.  (netstat -tn
  suggests not much is happening, but I don't know if the results can
  be trusted.)

* Would it be hard to add "tool tips" to the buttons in the UI?
  ==> Look for "tooltip" in examples/testgtk.ml.
      The easiest way is with a toolbar, but you can also add tooltips to any
      widget (cf lines 867 and after).

* > On a line, I would like to have a description of the action to be taken in
  > clear words: (e.g. will erase file on local or will copy from local to
  > remote, etc.)
  This might be a good use for "tool tips," if I knew how to make them work
  using lablGTK.

* After clicking "Create new profile" in the initial profile window and
  giving a name for the new profile, it is confusing to get dumped back
  into the profile window again and have to explicitly select the new
  profile.  Would be better to skip this step and go straight into
  filling in its fields.

* Another usability issue in the text UI: , and < should mean the same to
  unison. It would be nice if both had the same representation on-screen
  (ie, show a "<" even if I typed a ","). Similarly for . and >.

* The menu help for left/right arrow both said `transfer local to local'.
  Not helpful.  The items in question are pathnames, which you might not
  have to abbreviate.  To save space one might consider replacing any
  common prefix, and also short prefixes that look like they might be
  automounter goo, with an ellipsis.  Then show, e.g., 20 chars.  I'd
  also be willing to name paths in my profile, e.g., replica flatcoat =
  /home/cellar/nr replica cellar = /m/cellar60/nr This would be
  especially attractive if my short names were meaningful on the command
  line.

* In the GTK user interface, it would be nice to be able to put up a window 
  displaying the contents of the log file (and add log messages to it
  dynamically as we're working).  Be careful, though: the log could get
  large and we don't want this to be too slow. 

* Could there be an option between -ui text and -ui graphic that when combine
  with -batch and -auto would start in text mode, but pop up an interactive
  graphic window when real conflicts happens.

It would be nice to have a command in the GUI that would allow a single
  path within the replica to be selected from a file dialog and
  synchronized.

The scroll bar is not usable during transport: every time a line changes
  in the list, the display jumps to that line; if many small files are
  transfered, it makes browsing in the list quite impossible...  

[From Manuel Serrano] Would be nice to put the arrows in different
  directions in different colors, so that, e.g., you could quickly scan the
  list of changes and make sure that they are all in the same direction
  ===> We tried this, but we couldn't find color combinations that did not
  seem confusing.  (Two different shades of green?  Three? ...)  If we
  really want this, probably the best is to put in some preferences for the
  user to control the colors of all the arrows individually.

Under Windows, convert filename to Unicode before printing them.

Text mode user interface should be brought up to date with graphical
  interface (it should prompt for profile selection, creation, root
  entry, etc.; command characters should be the same; ...)

Since the manual is pretty big, it would be nice if the on-line version
  were accessible through cascading menus, allowing direct access to
  individual subsections.  It would also be nice if it were formatted a
  bit more attractively, using proportional-width fonts, etc.  (Does GTK
  have something like an RTF widget?)

If I have a change I look at the detail window. It would be nice to be
  able to click on one of the lines there instead of pressing one of <-
  or ->. For one thing in the detail window the relative position of the
  two files is up and down and translating that to <- or -> is somewhat
  unintuitive.

Also, it would be nice to highlight in the detailed window the
   elements that have changed.

Make it possible to select a bunch of conflicts at the same time and
  override them all together

The UI window should display the current roots somewhere.

There should be a -geometry command-line interface, following the usual X
  conventions. 

put in a command-line option that makes fatal errors exit right away
  without displaying anything in the graphical UI (for debugging)

Use the CTree widget to display the list of files
  Add the ability to close and open directories in the UI.

it would be nice to give a visual indication of which files are
  particularly big, so that the user can tell where the transfer
  operations may get slowed down.  Maybe a "size bar" showing the log
  of the size (perhaps also color coded). 
  ===> less urgent now because we can re-sort the update items by size

Would it be hard to allow long-running transfers to be aborted?
  For instance, the key "/" aborts the transmission of the selected file
  OR:
  Allow the user to terminate individual operations by clicking a
  "cancel" button.  (This is not completely straightforward because
  the whole program is single-threaded.  But it should be possible for
  the low-level transport code in remote.ml to realize that the
  operation has been aborted, clean up, and raise an exception.)

It would be nice if the initial 'usage' message were not so long.  Maybe
  we could split options into 'novice' and 'expert' ones, and only print
  the novice ones (with an indication how to obtain the full expert
  printout).

> Show diff should behave as an emacs view-mode buffer and quit on a single 
> 'q' in the window, or better quit even without focus be sent to the diff
> window...
The UI for the diff functionality needs some polishing.  (Also, it should
be merged with the new "merge" functionality.)

consider separating switches into 'ordinary' and 'expert' categories,
  documented in separate sections

would be nice to be able to "Proceed" just the selected line

might be nice if the GUI would beep when finished syncing (needs to be
  switch-selectable and off by default, naturally).  Is this easy with
  LablGTK? 

It would be nice to be able to STOP the GUI in the middle of propagating
  changes.  


TIDYING
=======

* Tidying
    - divide files into subdirs

* Go through the sources and make all fatal and transient error messages
  as informative as possible 

* remove ourlablgtk from the distribution

Make the sources available by anonymous CVS (maybe from SourceForge)

More documentation (especially in the interface files) is always nice.
  In particular, there isn't enough documentation of the big picture.
  It isn't clear how to fit together archives, servers, paths, roots, 
  update detection, reconciliation, conflict resolution, or the user 
  interface...

Ocamlexc v1.0, the uncaught exceptions analyzer for Objective Caml is now
  available from Pessaux's home page.  It would be fun to run it over the
  Unison sources and see if it reveals any problems.


LARGER EXTENSIONS
=================

* [From JMS] 
  Some update detection speed improvement suggestions:
  - Read the FFS (Fast Filesystem) paper for hints
  - change the working directory instead of using absolute paths; this
    avoids calls to the evil iname(?) facility in the kernel
  - work breadth-first instead of depth first, to keep things in the
    kernel cache

* Rewrite recon.ml in a more modular way.  Probably, have for each property
  a function taking the previous file state and the state on each
  replicas, and returning in what the synchronization operation should be
  (nothing, left, right, conflict); a combinator then merge the results.

* Here's an idea for speeding up dealing with moved files: 
  - we keep a log of informational hints about every file we look at,
    containing at least its size and (if we have it) it's fingerprint
    we just keep building up this information, never checking that
    it's still up to date until we try to use it, at which time we do
    double-check it with what's in the FS
  - when we're about to copy a file, we first look whether we've seen
    a file the same size on the receiving side.  If so, we see whether
    one of these files has the same fingerprint as the one we're about
    to copy, and if so we copy from the local one instead.

It would be good to have a graphical interface allowing management and
  editing of profiles, ignore patterns, etc.  Or, less ambitiously, just
  have UI options for all command-line options (killServer) 

How about a facility so that you can specify more than one pair of
  file systems for a single invocation of Unison? This would be like
  calling Unison multiple times, except that it would ask all the
  questions at once.  Better yet, we could actually deal with the
  multi-replica case.  (The latter is pretty hard.)

What about invoking some user-specified operation on each file as it
  is transferred?  Or in each directory where things have changed?
  (This will require some careful design work.)

Sync with archived directories (in tar / zip / gz format) would be
  nice.  Seems a bit awkward to implement, though: at the moment there
  are a lot of functions all over the place that investigate and
  modify the file system, and these would all have to be replaced with
  a layer that transparently parses, etc., etc.

Consider using other authentication services (e.g. Kerberos) instead
  of / in addition to ssh.

What happens when we synchronize, then decide to ignore some existing file
  What happens to the entry in the archive?  If mirroring, it may be
  large, we probably want to delete it from the archive.

File level synchronization (bookmarks, mailboxes)

It might be nice to implement an (optional) safety check that detects
  aliasing within a replica due to followed links (or hard links) and
  complains if it finds any.  This should not be *too* expensive, since
  we already know all the inode numbers.  (Even if it *is* expensive, it
  might be useful to allow users to do this occasionally, if they are
  paranoid.) 


WINDOWS ISSUES
==============

Suggestion from Arnaud:
  I have been using XP for a while and despite all the problems I have, there
  is a very nice feature: being able to mount remote folders (nothing new), to
  work with them offline and synchronize them. Really useful.
  -- 
  A good way to simulate this with Unison would be to package it as a shell
  extension. From the desktop by clicking on the right button the user selects
  "create new Unison mount point" and answers a few trivial question. And the
  rest is done in the background. There are a lot of examples of shell
  extensions and there is a really good book for O'Reilly about it.
  -- 
  A good project for a student :-)
  -- 
  PS: see http://www.simplythebest.net/shellenh.html for some examples.

when typing ctrl-c in windows (dos-window in win98SE) when
  unison is asking for conflicting updates there araises following
  message (sorry for my bad translation to english):
  "This program is closes because of a non-valid action. Contact the
  manufactura if the error remains".                            

NTFS seems to have two ways of setting a file read-only!  
Comments from Karl Moerder:
    Tonight I made some files read-only on my desktop at home. I did this by
    setting global read and execute permissions (from the security tab of
    properties). I ran Unison and it didn't notice the change. I then set
    the permissions back to full control and then selected the read-only box
    (from the general tab of properties). I ran Unison again and it noticed
    and pushed the perms change to the server.
    I understand that Windows is a bit squirrely here, but how do you decide
    which permissions to look at? It seems like perhaps the ones on the
    security tab would be more natural. (?)
    --
    I get similar results with both bits (they both cause read-only
    behavior).
    I believe that the origin of the two modes of setting is that the first
    set is the old way of doing Windows protection (probably the interface
    provided on FAT file systems) and the new way is the more Unix like way
    (added for NTFS file systems). The new way has rwxdpo bits for each
    group (and there can be several groups).


###########################################################################
###########################################################################
###########################################################################

OLD/DEAD STUFF
==============

We should handle more gracefully the file that cannot be synchronized
(for instance, read-only files)
propagating changes within a read-only directory is going to fail
    similar problem propagating unreadable files
  ==> this is not a bug.  The GUI should tell the user what happened in
      a nice way, though

It would be nice to have an option which takes .cvsignore
files into account.

Change "-socket 1234" to "-server -port 1234"??  (See msg from Karl Moerder)

Pipe "diff" output through a pager in text mode

Trevor's text mode bug:
  I tried poking into the text interface problem and got some really
  strange results.
  It doesn't seem to work at all under the cygwin bash window or ms-dos
  prompt.  E.g., typing unison -ui text simply returns, as does unison
  -version (without printing anything).  The -dumbtty flag does not
  help.
  [There is no console associated to the program in this can.
   Therefore, writing to stdout makes the program fail.]
  However, it works perfectly under an emacs shell, where I've set
  things up to use bash.
  [I don't know why it works in this case.]
  Maybe whoever else is using Windows can give it a try on their
    machine?
  And another:
    When I launch unison (client side) under windows nt, it works great. It
    also works fine under windows 98 when I use a standard dos command
    shell. The trouble I'm having is when use cygwin and the bash shell
    (B20.1) and launch the client from win98, I get an extra carriage return
    in the stream. This CR means the default action for the first file diff
    is taken. If the first conflict is a two way, the program correctly
    requeries me becuase it won't accept a CR. 
    I'm guessing that cygwin sends part of a cr/lf pair that other programs
    absorb or something similar. Again I only see this under win98 using
    cygnus...
  Console management under Window: a console is needed for the text UI
  and ssh. Creation of a console looks something like that:
    int hCrt;
    FILE *hf;
    AllocConsole();
    hCrt = _open_osfhandle((long) GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), _O_TEXT);
    hf = _fdopen( hCrt, "w" );
    *stdout = *hf;
    setvbuf( stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0 ); 

Can we have a way to toggle this after unison starts?  Sometimes my
laptop has a fast link, sometimes a slow link.  Consider that when
click-starting it isn't possible to add command-line args.  Having two
different profiles is possible, but, seems more like an annoying
duplication of all the ignore stuff etc.
            
The issue about where Unison should put its files if HOME is not set...
  > The problem here seems to be that unison is trying to create
  > DANGER.README in the directory specified by your HOME environment
  > variable, which seems to be set to /, where you do not have write
  > permission.  Does that make any sense?
  > 
    Yes it does, as I am running unison from inetd and it seems to default
  to / as its home dir.  How about changing that default to /var/unison,
  or almost anything else but /?  That would be nice....  (I know, I know,
  all those win systems don't have a /var/ directory....)
    Anyway, as long as the unison user has write permissions in /, unison
  from inetd works like a charm.  Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED without a
  strong firewall and VPN, though. <big grin>
Trevor:
    Maybe the DANGER.README should be in the unison directory, and we can
    have a command line flag for specifying the directory.  If so, we
    can't expect the user to notice it, we have to make sure unison
    conveys the info and lets the user recover (no more manual deletion).

Have a button for "Show ignores"

put in a "paranoid" switch that makes the update detector ignore the archive

Unison should perhaps confirm when I ask for a conflict to be resolved
  by copying an old file over a new file.
  ==> this is a good idea, but we're not sure exactly how the UI should
      report this / ask for confirmation (pop up a window? display
      something in red?)

it would be nice if some *intermittent* status messages got displayed
  when the remote host was working on detecting updates (but be careful
  not to display too many -- this can slow things down a lot)
  ===> This is not feasible

[Trevor] Finish integrating the new syntax for replicas. There are some
  important design decisions to make.
  * Should we allow synchronization of two remote roots on the same
    host? E.g., suppose we are host foo and we execute
       unison //bar //bar:5050
    The first root is our home directory on bar, and the second root
    is the directory on bar that a unison server was started in. It
    might be reasonable to do this. The technical problem is that the
    Remote module maps HOSTS to network connections (sockets). Clearly
    here we need one connection per root, so Remote should really map
    ROOTS to network connections. But there are also a bunch of
    functions that execute according to the host, and not the root:
    processCommitLogOnHost, renameOnHost, propagatePrefsTo,
    canonizeFspathOnHost, canonicalHostnameOnHost, killServerOnHost,
    and maybe others. 

Another diff issue:
  If I run the diff, and I decide that the version with the < marker
  is what I want to keep, I have to choose the > arrow in unison.
  I find this fact very disconcerting.  Suggestion: use diff -c.  [Norman]
  ==> Not a bug.  Norman can use diff -c if he prefers.

Get rid of _ stuff in paths
  proposal:
    path <--> printpath    use name<->printname; insert "/" as separator
    name <-> printname :
      a/b   <->  <not possible>
      a\b   <->  a=bkslash=b
      a=b   <->  a=eq=b
    name2unixname
      a/b   <->  <not possible>
      a\b   <->  a\b
      a=b   <->  a=b
    name2win32name
      a/b   <->  <not possible>
      a\b   <->  a/b
      a=b   <->  a=b

Here are some weird invocations we ought to detect.
  * unison foo foo/bar
  * unison foo foo
  * unison //saul/foo //saul.cis.upenn.edu/foo
All of these involve synchronizing overlapping trees.
Another example would be two trees with nonoverlapping roots that
overlap due to symbolic links somewhere inside the trees.
  ==> should be part of the same sanity check at the beginning

Encrypt socket connections.
  ==> We've resisted doing this because it seems hard and we don't want
  to do anything in this domain that we can't do well.  But it's worth
  thinking about.

"Hanrahan, Donald" <dhanrahan@logicon.com>
  Also I find that even with the -batch option set, I am getting a
  fair bit of output to the console rather than the log file.  I am
  not sure if this is going to be a problem when running as a service
  (probably not as long as it doesn't prompt for input).  Perhaps
  someone knows.

Can we detect and follow hard links?  E.g., consider a hard link to a
file outside a root.  Right now we'll update the link to be a new
file, the file outside will not be updated.  Maybe this is the right
behavior; but we should put something into the docs.