Patching for --omit-symlink-times?

[Steve Polyack]

  I was wondering if anyone would have any input on a patch to add 
another command line feature, --omit-symlink-times.  We recently ran 
into a problem with rsync (at least with the way we use it):
- We need to preserve file modification times between the source and 
destination (--preserve-times)
- The user performing the rsync may not always be the owner of the files 
on the destination (but is in the same group, and all files have group 
write permissions)

The problem arrises when using symlinks.  Files are always recreated (as 
the user performing the rsync) on the destination when the source file 
has a later mtime, regardless of changes.  Symlinks however, are NOT 
recreated when the mtime differs; instead, the mtime is simply adjusted 
on the destination.  This is problematic because a user who does not own 
a file or symlink can not adjust the mtime of the file to a time that 
isn't time(NULL) (no), see utimes(2).  Thus rsync fails with "failed to 
set times on...".  The rest of the rsync completes, but our scripts rely 
on trusting the return codes.

I assume this is the same reason why the --omit-dir-times option exists: 
because it is not trivial (or necessary) to recreate a directory to 
update the mtime.  So, my solution was to create a patch to add a 
--omit-symlink-times option, which simply skips trying to preserve the 
mtime on symlinks.  It works exactly like the --omit-dir-times option.

My question is:
- Is there another way around this (such as forcing rsync to recreate 
symlinks that haven't "changed")?
- Would you be interested in applying the patch to the rsync source tree?

Thanks!
Steve Polyack