NEWS for rsync 2.6.8 (22 Apr 2006)
Protocol: 29 (unchanged)
Changes since 2.6.7:

  BUG FIXES:

    - Fixed a bug in the exclude code where an anchored exclude without any
      wildcards fails to match an absolute source arg, but only when --relative
      is in effect.

    - Improved the I/O code for the generator to fix a potential hang when the
      receiver gets an EOF on the socket but the generator's select() call
      never indicates that the socket is writable for it to be notified about
      the EOF.  (This can happen when using stunnel).

    - Fixed a problem with the file-reading code where a failed read (such as
      that caused by a bad sector) would not advance the file's read-position
      beyond the failed read's data.

    - Fixed a logging bug where the "log file" directive was not being honored
      in a single-use daemon (one spawned by a remote-shell connection or by
      init).

    - If rsync cannot honor the --delete option, we output an error and exit
      instead of silently ignoring the option.

    - Fixed a bug in the --link-dest code that prevented special files (such as
      fifos) from being linked.

    - The ability to hard-link symlinks and special files is now determined at
      configure time instead of at runtime.  This fixes a bug with --link-dest
      creating a hard-link to a symlink's referent on a BSD system.

  ENHANCEMENTS:

    - In daemon mode, if rsync fails to bind to the requested port, the
      error(s) returned by socket() and/or bind() are now logged.

    - When we output a fatal error, we now output the version of rsync in the
      message.

    - Improved the documentation for the --owner and --group options.

    - The rsyncstats script in "support" has an improved line-parsing regex
      that is easier to read and also makes it to parse syslog-generated lines.

    - A new script in "support": file-attr-restore, can be used to restore the
      attributes of a file-set (the permissions, ownership, and group info)
      taken from the cached output of a "find ARG... -ls" command.

  DEVELOPER RELATED:

    - Removed the unused function write_int_named(), the unused variable
      io_read_phase, and the rarely used variable io_write_phase.  This also
      elides the confusing 'phase "unknown"' part of one error message.

    - Removed two unused configure checks and two related (also unused)
      compatibility functions.

    - The xattrs.diff patch received a security fix that prevents a potential
      buffer overflow in the receive_xattr() code.

    - The acls.diff patch has been improved quite a bit, with more to come.

    - A new patch was added: log-file.diff.  This contains an early version of
      a future option, --log-file=FILE, that will allow any rsync to log its
      actions to a file (something that only a daemon supports at present).
