"Doh!", or: The Sync'ing Feeling I Get With Recursion

[jw schultz]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 12:46:35PM -0500, Derek Simkowiak wrote:
> 
> 	This message describes (imho) a behaviour bug in rsync.  I'm going
> to submit a patch, but before I dive into the code I want to know what the
> actual desired behaviour should be.  In other words, please comment.
> 
> 	I have some directories I want to keep synchronised between two
> machines (call them "master" and "backup").
> 
> 	Every now and then someone deletes a file on "master".  When that
> happens I want to sync the containing directory (in order to have that
> doomed file deleted on "backup").  But here's the catch; I do NOT want to
> recurse into all subdirectories.  I ONLY want that one file to be deleted,
> by rsync'ing the containing dir with the --delete option.  This is in a
> big dir tree with many subdirs, and it's too expensive for me to sync up
> all subdirs when a single file near the top has been deleted.

Yours is a very unusual request.  A directory isn't in sync
unless all its subdirs are.

> 1. Add a --max-recursion-depth option
> 
> 	I could then set this to "1" and have my problem solved.  Setting
> --max-recursion-depth to "0" would be the same as not specifying -r.
> That is, setting it to zero would disable sync'ing of directories
> altogether (which is the default behaviour now without the -r).
> 
> Pros: Might be generally useful to other individuals, does not change
> current behaviour
> Cons: Yet another special-interest-group option for the docs

This can be accomplihed with --exclude
	/*/	== no recursion
	/*/*/	== only top level subdirs
	/*/*/*/	== only top two levels

It doesn't need another option.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

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