man, NEWS: add --dry-run-metadata

NEWS.md

@@ -21,6 +21,11 @@
   command-line usage.
 - If the server-side state was modified and tarsnap exits with an error, it
   will now have an exit code of 2.
+- tarsnap -c now accepts --dry-run-metadata, which simulates creating an
+  archive without reading any file data.  This is significantly faster than a
+  regular --dry-run, and is suitable for checking which filesystem entries
+  will be archived (with -v) or checking the total archive size (with --totals
+  or --progress-bytes).
 
 
 Tarsnap Releases

misc/describe-options.txt

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 --csv-file		write statistics in CSV format to a file
 --disk-pause		often pause for ARG ms while creating an archive
 --dry-run		do not really create an archive; just simulate doing so
+--dry-run-metadata	do not really create an archive; just simulate the metadata
 --dump-config		print all config lines
 --exclude		do not process certain files or directories
 --fast-read		stop after the first entry which matches the ARG	DUP-q

tar/tarsnap.1-mdoc.in

@@ -339,6 +339,25 @@ from the tarsnap server.
 Furthermore,
 .Fl -dry-run
 will not check whether the cache directory is out of sync.
+.It Fl -dry-run-metadata
+(c mode only)
+Don't really create an archive; just simulate doing so.
+This is similar to
+.Fl -dry-run ,
+except that it doesn't read any files; it only processes filesystem metadata.
+.Pp
+This is significantly faster than a regular
+.Fl -dry-run ,
+but it is still suitable for checking which filesystem entries will be
+archived (with
+.Fl v ) ,
+or getting the total uncompressed archive size (via
+.Fl -totals
+or
+.Fl -progress-bytes ) .
+.Pp
+This option cannot be used with
+.Fl -print-stats .
 .It Fl -dump-config
 Print out the command-line and all non-blank lines read from config files.
 .It Fl -exclude Ar pattern