Remote file access (3/4): downloadFile(remote, local) — the symmetric, digest-verified counterpart of uploadFile #147

Third issue of the remote file access family: the missing symmetric half of WinRMClient.uploadFile(Path, String). Builds on openStream() from #146 (the foundation) — it does not need the listing of #145.

Context

client.uploadFile(Path localFile, String remoteFile) has existed since the smbj removal (#117): it pushes a local file through the WinRM channel itself, digest-verified, skipping the transfer when the destination already has identical content. There is no way back. Every caller that needs to retrieve a remote log or a command's output file has to shell out to type/Get-Content and hope the encoding survives.

downloadFile is the mirror image, and it should mirror the upload's guarantees, not just its direction: verified integrity, no wasted transfer, and no half-written local file left behind on failure.

Proposed API

Symmetric with the existing method, on the client:

client.downloadFile("C:\\Windows\\Temp\\collect.log", Path.of("collect.log"));

And as a terminal on the per-path request, for the fluent form:

long bytes = client.file("C:\\Windows\\Temp\\collect.log")
    .downloadTo(Path.of("collect.log"));

Flow — one remote digest probe

1. Probe the remote digest with ShellFileCopy.digestProbe / parseAnyDigest.
2. If the local destination exists with the same digest → no transfer, return.
3. Otherwise client.file(remote).openStream() → DigestInputStream → temporary file in the destination's directory.
4. Compare the received digest with the probed one; on match fsync and ATOMIC_MOVE onto the target. On any failure (mismatch, timeout, interruption) delete the temporary file.

A file modified between the probe and the transfer shows up as a digest mismatch — the correct outcome.

Requirements

• Digest verification, both ways. Compute the remote digest with the probe ShellFileCopy already has (certutil -hashfile, SHA256 with a SHA1 fallback — see CERTUTIL_ALGORITHMS), compare it with the digest of the received bytes, and fail with the same shape of WindowsRemoteException the upload path raises on a mismatch. Reuse ShellFileCopy.digestHex / parseAnyDigest rather than reimplementing.
• Skip an identical transfer, matching the upload's behavior: if the local destination already exists with the same digest, do not transfer, and say so (return value or documented no-op).
• Atomic destination: stream into a temporary file in the destination's directory, fsync, then ATOMIC_MOVE onto the target. A failure or a timeout must never leave a truncated file at the destination path.
• Bounded memory: built on the streaming read, never readBytes() into a byte[] first. A 500 MB file must download in constant memory (slowly — see below).
• Downloads are not resumable — decided, and deliberately out of scope: an interrupted download starts over. Resuming would mean tracking verified byte counts across attempts and re-validating that the remote file has not changed, which is more state machine than this transport's speed justifies. Say so in the Javadoc and in file-transfers.md so callers do not expect otherwise.
• Reuse the quota-rejection retry (isRetryableQuotaRejection, QUOTA_RETRIES, QUOTA_RETRY_DELAY_MILLIS): a long download hits the same WinRM operation quotas the upload does.
• Directory destination: downloadFile(remote, Path.of("C:\\dir")) where the local path is an existing directory writes dir\<remote file name>, like cp — decided (the CLI get default destination in Remote file access (4/4): CLI ls, stat, cat and get subcommands #148 needs the same resolution). Document it.
• Honest performance documentation. Base64 through a command shell is roughly an order of magnitude slower than SMB; publish a measured figure from the live host in file-transfers.md and keep the existing "not a bulk transport" caveat prominent. Callers moving gigabytes should use SMB, and the docs should say so.
• Timeout is the client's wall-clock deadline for the blocking method; a large download will need an explicitly raised timeout, and the exception message must make the cause obvious (bytes transferred / total when it fired).

Tests & docs

• Round-trip test: uploadFile then downloadFile returns byte-identical content, for a binary file with every byte value and for a file with a non-ASCII name.
• FakeWsmanServer tests: digest mismatch → failure with no file at the destination; interruption mid-transfer → no partial file left behind and no half-written temporary file; identical-digest destination → no transfer performed.
• WinRMLiveTest: download a real file from anaxagore and verify its digest.
• file-transfers.md extended with the download direction, the integrity and atomicity guarantees, the measured throughput, and the SMB recommendation for bulk data; README snippet next to uploadFile.

Acceptance criteria

• downloadFile retrieves byte-exact content, digest-verified against the remote host.
• No partial file is ever visible at the destination path — verified by a test that interrupts mid-transfer.
• An identical local file is not re-downloaded.
• A file substantially larger than the JVM heap downloads successfully.
• mvn verify site green: no checkstyle/PMD/SpotBugs findings, full Javadoc, docs updated.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code