I looked at the rsync commit log and basically every commit since March says “tridge and claude committed.” Andrew Tridgell, the guy who literally invented rsync in 1996. Now hes using a chatbot to write the code and proudly displaying its name right there in the commit.
And before anyone goes “calm down its just a typo fix” no. The recent stuff is the security fixes for 3.4.3. The symlink race CVEs… You know, the exact part where you want an actual human who understands what hes doing, not a machine that spits out code that looks correct but has correctness errors.
Do you get how insane this is? Rsync is the thing holding up basically every backup system on earth. Your NAS uses it. Distro mirrors use it. The server with you grandmas photos uses it. And now the plan is to let a token predictor that can’t even count the amount of letter R’s in “strawberry” write code for it.
“But the tests pass.” The tests pass because the AI probably wrote the tests too you walnut. Its a loop of confident nonsense thats grading its own homework, and the first time it hits an edge case nobody fed it its gonna silently corrupt something and noone notices till the backups are already poisoned.
I’m pinning v3.4.1 and not updating again. If you defend this, dont say nobody warned you when the data loss posts start appearing.
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proudly displaying its name
I prefer that over hiding the fact they used a LLM. At least I know what to expect when I see that.
This post is so needlessly aggressive and assumptive.
Lot of assumptions as to what’s going on here. All we can say for certain is that Claude is involved in the process somewhere.
I think concern is warranted, but let’s wait for more information before we decide rsync is “cooked”.
But I already had my pitchfork ready!
May I interest you in using it against corrupt governments?
I think you should keep it ready.
If you don’t trust the guy who “literally invented rsync in 1996” to do right by his project which he has been doing quite all right with for the past 28 years, then I don’t know how to help you. I’d like to put forward an insane idea that he might know what he’s doing and is not vibecoding with a blindfold on and a beer in his hand.
Are there any actual issues in those commits though? I spot checked a few and they look pretty benign, and don’t really look vibe coded to me.
Just because someone uses an AI tool doesn’t mean their work is vibe-coded slop. An experienced developer that knows what they’re doing can use AI as a tool to take care of boring/mundane parts and write a rough plan for their work, while still paying attention to the business logic and system design, and still fully reviewing everything themselves.
A lot of the recent commits are in the test suite, and building test suites, fixtures and harnesses is something AI is fairly decent at if you give it a good prompt (give it the input, expected output, and expected side effects).
Difficult to tell. I don’t see anything too obvious or offensive in the commits. They also write like a human in the associated pull requests. Not sure what Claude’s role is here. Also the added code comments are kinda on point, use contractions… Not really what I’d expect from an AI.
Is there more info on this? A blog post or some statement by the project? At first glance this doesn’t look to me like other vibe-coded projects.
People have reported regressions with post-3.4.1 versions of rsync. If it’s a coincidence, then it’s one hell of one.
Lmao. Thanks. Seems this is the issue report then, to stay informed about the outcome: https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/915
There’s maybe still hope. If this really is a botched AI security fix, it’d be a great opportunity to fail early and learn something. Like to re-think the AI approach 😆
I’ve seen a post on mastodon where some rsync stuff broke already :/
Debian Stable is my last hope.
You Arch fuckers once mocked me for my outdated packages – no more!
I don’t think a long time developer would use AI as anything else than a tool. Understanding what you’re doing with the tool is the key.
I’m pinning v3.4.1 and not updating again.
Maybe somebody can fork 3.4.1 into a new program without the slop code and do (real, human-made) updates from there?
Sure, someone should fork and keep maintaining this software that’s business critical for the entire world and a potential target to attackers with nation-state resources, just to keep its code AI-free and pure, without getting paid.
Not me, though ;)
And make it in rust!
And deal with the lack of appreciation and storm of criticism the moment they don’t perform their volunteer work the way a bunch of entitled dicks online feel they should
If you do this and don’t point to actual issues with the code you’re wasting everybodies time and don’t know what vibe coded means.
You do realise that you’re increasingly starting to sound like That Guy who rants “he uses a compiler to wrote his code! This is insane, it’ll never compare to hand written assembly!”, right?
Any remotely competent software engineer is using LLMs at least to find out what they’re capable of. And yes, they are capable of many useful things. The reality of utility lies at a point between the extremes of “not at all” and “100% vibe coded”.
You are welcome to do your hobby programming entirely with pen, paper and assembler - or just without any AI tools. It’s a hobby, you do you. But seriously, leave the professionals alone.
I love how confident y’all are that AI isn’t going to affect your coding and you really think you’ll survive in the industry without adjusting how you work.
Even today, it’s already better than most coders at small specialized scoped tasks.
Use the tools when appropriate. This is such a stupid fucking thing to get your undies in a twist over.
But yeah, I’m sure y’all will lead the fork and put in your own time to own it.
You never know. I thought Devuan was a fantasy but the team’s burning hatred was enough to make it work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I suggest you read up on evidence before calling someone stupid for being cautious. There are studies that prove that open source developers were measured 20% slower when coding with LLMs even though they felt 1.5-2x faster. And we are talking about security sensitive software used by millions of people not ‘small specialized scoped tasks’ like you are in your comment. By the way, there is a huge environmental impact that is being caused by AI bros / big corpos pushing this endless slop onto us. There are protests going on because datacenters are literally poisoning the drinking water, pushing the electricity costs onto the community rather than supplying their own stuff, while adding a handful of jobs to the local economy. Educate yourself, the condescending comment doesnt help any one when the facts arent on your side.
