OpenBSD Journal

rsync replaced with openrsync on macOS Sequoia

Contributed by Will Backman on from the good code travels well dept.

We (undeadly.org editors) had not noticed ourselves, but Will Backman wrote in about the news that some OpenBSD code -- openrsync -- had been made available to a wider audience, courtesy of Apple:

"While Apple has been updating the rsync 2.6.9 command line tool it shipped with macOS as needed in response to security issues and other problems, the fact remains that Apple’s version of rsync up until macOS Sequoia was almost twenty years old and did not include any of the new features introduced in rsync versions which came after version 2.6.9."

"Now with macOS Sequoia, Apple has replaced rsync 2.6.9 with openrsync, an implementation of rsync which is not using any version of the GPL open source license."

You can read more at https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2025/04/06/rsync-replaced-with-openrsync-on-macos-sequoia/

The editors can confirm that on a fully updated Mac, man rsync will reveal that rsync is indeed the OpenBSD openrsync.

Reply

Comments

  1. By John (bitminer) j@bitminer.ca on

    Curiously, Apple's name is missing from

    https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html

    Reply

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (anonymouse) on

      Also, perhaps more importantly, they didn't feed back any of their many changes to the upstream codebase (which means more work for them when merging changes in the OpenBSD version later). Sure, the license doesn't require it, but it would make a lot of sense...

      Sadly neither Apple's nor OpenBSD's version support the 2008 version of the rsync protocol which has big improvements (incremental file list) when dealing with a large number of files.

      Reply

      Comments

      1. By grey (grey) on http://www.artkiver.com

        Yeah, there has been some discourse on the FediVerse in this thread here:

        https://mastodon.sdf.org/@ParadeGrotesque/114298852894809118

        Which clued me into https://github.com/kristapsdz/openrsync which has some portability improvements!

        So I submitted a Pull Request to add openrsync to MacPorts derived from that version.

        Which in turn yielded some conjecture that maybe this:

        https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/rsync

        is the fork Apple is utilizing (ironically, I seem to run into build errors with it even on macOS 15.4; but I see it has xcodeproj it.sh littered around and that isn't how I do dev related things on macOS personally, even if that is probably what most Apple users do).

        TL;DR no conclusive nor official word from Apple, but there's some stuff for those who may want to dig more deeply.

        Reply

        Comments

        1. By rjc (rjc) on

          It is pretty straightforward to figure out which code they are using:
          From Apple's Open Source Releases page click on View Release and then scroll down to rsync @ 9094e9e or, on the first page, scroll down straight to rsync and, inside the openrsync directory, the README.md clearly points at Kristap's repository.
          BTW, the above is for macOS 15.3 release - 15.4 is not there yet.

          Reply

Latest Articles

Credits

Copyright © - Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]