Adding in-place reconstruction to rsync changes the operation and the usage the rsync utility in minor ways. In-place reconstruction affects interfaces, error handling, and the information and statistics that rsync generates.
Because ip-rsync updates a single copy of the data on the target, it changes the operational semantics of the tool, particularly when errors occur. Modifications to the file at the target cannot be isolated from a process reading data concurrently. New failure and recovery scenarios occur; incomplete synchronizations leave a partially updated file on the target that cannot be recovered to either the old or the new version.