Planning fixing '--force not working'

[Dave Dykstra]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 04:04:44PM -0800, Chris Cogdon wrote:
...
> --force is indeed necessary, as it isn't entirely replaced by 
> --delete-excluded. I think I detailed an example in #3500, but I'll 
> reiterate here.
> 
> Say I'm mirroring a image website. Rather than mirror all the 
> automatically-generated index files, I just mirror the images and have the 
> local system generate the files straight after the rsync. However, if a 
> directory is deleted (and its contents) on the source side, only the 
> contents will be deleted on the destination side, since the index files 
> are not deleted (without --delete-excluded), and therefore the directory 
> is not empty. This is what --force is supposed to do, according to the man 
> page :)

Don't go by the man page -- it is very vague, and it doesn't address this
specific case.


> --delete-excluded is not the solution, as this will delete the index files 
> on the destination each time rsync is run. I dont want to regenerate 
> everything... only what's necessary to regenerate.

Agreed.


> So... I'm putting my vote in into having --force kept, and fixed to do 
> what's documented :) I'll continue trying to grok rsync to a point that I 
> can supply patches.

I think I agree that it makes sense for --delete --force to delete
destination directories even if they have excluded files in them, but I'm
still cautious and want to reserve the right to change my mind when I see
the code.


> If I have questions about the code, should i send them to you, or to the 
> mailing list?

The list.

- Dave Dykstra