Technical Hurdles for Win32 rsync port

Question

Despite primarily being a windows user, I am a huge fan of rsync. Now, I don't want to argue the virtues of rsync vs any other tool...this is not my point.

The only way I've ever found of running rsync on windows is via a version that is built to run on top of Cygwin, and as Cygwin has issues with Unicode, so does rsync.

Is anyone familiar enough with the workings of rsync to say if there are any real technical programming hurdles to porting rsync to a native Win32 binary?

Or is it maybe that there has just never been enough interest from windows users to care to port it over?

Partly I ask because I'm am considering trying to take on the task of starting a port, but I want to make sure there's not something I'm missing in terms of why it may not be possible.

Answer 1

The way that windows locks open files might cause an issue requiring you to hook into the Volume Shadowcopy Service.

About two years ago this fellow ported the algorithm to C#. I haven't taken a look at the code (or the provided binary), but it might be a place to start looking or someone to try contacting.
http://www.russiantequila.com/wordpress/?p=8