The "test-xfer" command:

Pass the sync-protocol input file XFERFILE into the server-side sync protocol handler. Generate a reply on standard output.

This command was original created to help debug the server side of sync messages. The XFERFILE is the uncompressed content of an "xfer" HTTP request from client to server. This command interprets that message and generates the content of an HTTP reply (without any encoding and without the HTTP reply headers) and writes that reply on standard output.

One possible usages scenario is to capture some XFERFILE examples using a command like:

fossil push http://bogus/ --httptrace

The complete HTTP requests are stored in files named "http-request-N.txt". Find one of those requests, remove the HTTP header, and make other edits as necessary to generate an appropriate XFERFILE test case. Then run:

fossil test-xfer xferfile.txt

Options:

--host

HOSTNAME Supply a server hostname used to populate g.zBaseURL and similar.