Recreating a different arrangement of the same files

[Elliot Lee]

Systems A & B both have copies of tree X. I want to synchronize tree Y
from A to B, tree Y consisting of hard links to various files in tree X.

--compare-dest is a good start (and the --link-dest patch goes a bit
further towards what I want), but both of those require the files on
system B to be arranged in the same layout as the target.

As one solution, if I rsync trees X & Y in one rsync -H (they are subdirs
on the same filesystem), will rsync figure out that only link operations
are necessary to put the files in their new locations? Or if not, would it
be possible for an rsync hacker to add an option for the type of
optimization I seek?

-- Elliot
Forget world domination. The Red Planet shall belong to Red Hat.