Pulp

Two specific special cases will cause units to be included in a publish which are not meant to be - units which have not been published via the predistributor.

1. Deleting a unit will cause a full republish of all units, including units which have not yet been published by the yum predistributor

dnf download cowsay
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/distributors/ < rsync_distributor.json
pulp-admin rpm repo sync run --repo-id zoo
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=yum_distributor
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=my_rpm_rsync_distributor
pulp-admin rpm repo remove rpm --repo-id zoo --str-eq 'filename=kangaroo-0.2-1.noarch.rpm'
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=yum_distributor
pulp-admin rpm repo uploads rpm --repo-id zoo --file cowsay-3.04-4.fc25.noarch.rpm
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=my_rpm_rsync_distributor

Result: cowsay RPM is published via rsync despite not having been published by the yum predistributor

2. On the very first rsync publish, if a predistributor publish has occurred it will do a full publish of all units, including those not yet published via the yum predistributor

dnf download cowsay
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/distributors/ < rsync_distributor.json
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=yum_distributor
pulp-admin rpm repo uploads rpm --repo-id zoo --file cowsay-3.04-4.fc25.noarch.rpm
phttp POST https://localhost/pulp/api/v2/repositories/zoo/actions/publish/ id=my_rpm_rsync_distributor

Result: cowsay RPM is published via rsync despite not having been published by the yum predistributor

The culprit is this code in pulp/server/plugins/rsync/publish.py:

.....
.....
.....
        if self.is_fastforward():
            start_date = self.last_published
            end_date = None
            if self.predistributor:
                end_date = self.predistributor["last_publish"]
            date_filter = self.create_date_range_filter(start_date=start_date, end_date=end_date)
        else:
            date_filter = None
.....
.....
.....

def is_fastforward(self):
     ....
     ....
     ....
     return last_published and ((last_deleted and last_published > last_deleted) or not last_deleted) and not force_full and not delete

If it is the first publish or if a unit has been or is being deleted, is_fastforward() resolves to False, and the date filter is set to "None". Therefore, it is not respecting the date of the predistributor publish.