OpenSSH GSoC Project

[Jim Knoble]

On 2009-03-23 16:05, Pavel Labath wrote:

: So, what are the features we want a polished sftp to have?

The best interactive terminal-based SFTP client i've used so far is LFTP
<http://lftp.yar.ru/>, by opening an URL like 'sftp://remote-host'.

: The only thing mentioned so far is the recursive up/down load, which
: looks more like a thing for a two day hackfest than a all-summer-long
: $4.5k operation.

Perhaps i misunderstand, but i think the intent of the GSoC description
is to make sftp(1) a potential replacement for scp(1), insofar as
non-interactive invocation from the shell prompt is concerned.  Example:

    scp -p -r ./some_dir remote-host:

Currently, sftp(1) understands neither '-p' nor '-r'.  Obviously,
sftp(1) currently has some conflicting options, and it will be necessary
to balance compatibility with scp(1) against compatibilty with prior
versions of sftp(1).

It may be that the best way to do some of this would be the same way
F-Secure's SSH does it:  use scp2(1), which would eventually completely
replace scp(1).

That said, i often use either rsync(1) or combinations of ssh(1) and
tar(1) to do transfers from a shell command-line.

: Features i would consider useful are:
: - tab completion (both commands and filenames) - very useful, not difficult

Tab completion is nice.  LFTP provides both local and remote filename
completion, but remote completion can sometimes take awhile, so beware.

: - transfer resume (thanks Iain Morgan, I almost forgot) - very useful,
: not difficult

Look at LFTP's interface for resuming ("continuing") a transfer.

: - background transfer (possibly threads, or just fancy select() calls) -
: useful, not very difficult

Again, look at LFTP for ideas.

-- 
jim knoble  |  jmknoble at pobox.com  |  http://www.pobox.com/~jmknoble/
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