Feature suggestion: --write-batch --dry-run

[Wayne Davison]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 06:48:58PM +0000, Peter Hartley wrote:
> Even better, of course, would be to find out that this sort of operation
> was *already* possible using some rsync features I missed when looking
> into this...

The only way to do this at the moment is to do a local update of an
identical set of destination files, and create a batch file from that
update.  In other words, you need an identical copy of the remote files
on a local system (either the same system as the source of real
transfer, or somewhere on its local net).  To ensure that this local set
of files is identical to the old files on the remote system you'll
either need to ensure that the remote files don't change between
updates, or you'll need to do a reverse rsync of the remote-host's files
to the local-host's duplicate copy (and hope that this update is small
enough to complete in a reasonable amount of time).  Then, create a
batch file by updating the local copy of the remote server's files.
Transport the batch file to the remote site and use --read-batch to make
an identical update on the remote system.  That brings the two
hierarchies back into sync, and readies the setup for the next update.

I've entered an enhancement suggestion into bugzilla that requests that
--write-batch and --dry-run be allowed to work together to create a
batch file without updating the remote system.

..wayne..