Rsync friendly gzip

Question

I must not be the only one - I'm rsyncing .tar.gz files and notice that every time the full file gets rsynced rather than the differences. Reading into it it seems back in 1999 someone created an algorithm that fixed the issue http://svana.org/kleptog/rgzip.html (only 5% of data needed transferred)

Has this gone anywhere since, how do I create rsync friendly .tar.gz files?

Answer 1

I know that Ubuntu Linux applies a patch (gzip file) to gzip sources to allow for a --rsyncable flag. You can download that patch and use it yourself, or see if your distribution includes the patch.

Answer 2

my gzip (on ubuntu and fedora) has the --rsyncable option. So create the tarballs using:

tar -c whatever/ | gzip --rsyncable > file.tar.gz

Answer 3

http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2009/07/rsyncable-gzip.html

gzip -rsyncable

Answer 4

BeezNest has a pretty good explanation of the rsyncable option for gzip. In the author's test, this option added about 1% to the file size, but made it possible for rsync to transfer the updates to a gzipped file with over 1,300 times speedup.

For the gory details, see this discussion, which they cite.