rsync feature suggestion

[Max Bowsher]

Hadmut Danisch wrote:
> I'd like to suggest a new feature to rsync.

> I am mirroring a debian archive, but unfortunately,
> debian mixes all files of several distributions in a
> subtree /pool. There is no way to select only the files
> of a certain distribution through a simple exclude/include
> expression.
>
> There is a tool called debmirror, which first downloads
> the distribution index files, extracts all the filenames/paths
> of the files needed and then calls rsync for every single file.
> Thats certainly not useful, especially since rsync shows the
> servers motd for every single file.

I was about to suggest:
$ rsync --include-from=list-file --exclude=\*
but of course that will exclude the parent directories of files you want,
causing them to be ignored.

This might work:
$ rsync --include-from=list-file --include=\*\*/ --exclude=\*

although it will mirror the entire directory structure (but not unspecified
files).

Probably, rsync should be taught that: "If I explicitly include a file, look
for it explicitly, even if I've excluded a parent directory."

Max.