Mirrors in DOS
Posted by Trixter on January 27, 2007
So now that I have this giant extra drive on my XT, what should I do with it? Other than the obvious frivolity (such as an entire movie 8088_corr style), backups is the obvious choice since I still actively develop software on it. The best way to do this would normally be rsync, but since I haven’t come across a 16-bit DOS port of rsync that functions properly, the obvious alternative is XXCOPY. Why XXCOPY and not DOS’ XCOPY? Because XXCOPY has rsync-like functionality, where you can have it copy only changed files and also delete non-existant files/dirs in the destination. In other words:
rsync -va --delete <source> <destination>
…is handled by XXCOPY thusly:
xxcopy <source> <destination> /clone /yy
And best of all, the author of XXCOPY is the guy who coded Mad Planets, which was an 8086, so compatibility with my XT is all but assured! (rubs hands in glee)
Oldskooler Ramblings 
Leave a Reply