[Tutor] how can I compare a local directory or file with a remote one

[Lloyd Kvam]

On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 09:47 -0400, Danny Yoo wrote:
> >> At first blush it sounds to me like you want rsync, as has been
> >> pointed out.  If on of the systems is running an OS that doesn't come
> >> with rsync... I have used http://www.vdesmedt.com/~vds2212/rsync.html
> >> to achieve the same result.
> >>
> >
> > When I need to deal with Windows computers, I sorely feel the lack of 
> > ssh, rsync, and sshfs.
> 
> 
> I know this is very Python-unspecific, but I might as well chime in: 
> there's a utility called "Unison" that's similar to rsync, and works on 
> Windows:
> 
>      http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Unfortunately unison uses either ssh or an unsecured socket for
communicating over a network.  From their docs:

        Warning: The socket method is insecure: not only are the texts
        of your changes transmitted over the network in unprotected
        form, it is also possible for anyone in the world to connect to
        the server process and read out the contents of your filesystem!
        (Of course, to do this they must understand the protocol that
        Unison uses to communicate between client and server, but all
        they need for this is a copy of the Unison sources.) The socket
        method is provided only for expert users with specific needs;
        everyone else should use the ssh method.

Just to get a bit more Python related, I've used the urllib2 libraries
to make SSL connections to a DAV (also spelled WebDav) server.  This is
reasonably straightforward to program in Python, but the server side is
clumsy to setup.

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp