specifying a list of files to transfer

[Dave Dykstra]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 01:21:29PM -0800, Wayne Davison wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 11:02:44AM -0500, Andrew J. Schorr wrote:
> > I am attaching an updated version of my patch to allow you to specify
> > a list of files to transfer.
> 
> Cool.  I'm looking into making this work when fetching files.  Towards
> that end, I'd like to suggest an alternate command-line syntax to make
> the --source-file option take a filename.  This will allow it to accept
> "-" as stdin, and will make it easy to parse for the pull syntax.  This
> means that we need to omit the SRC spec on a push or specify it as
> empty.  E.g. these will all work:
> 
>   rsync --source-list=file remote:/path
>   rsync --source-list file : remote:/path
>   rsync --source-list=- "" remote:/path <file
> 
> A pull looks like this:
> 
>   rsync --source-list=file remote: /path
>   rsync --source-list - remote::module /path <file
> 
> What do people think?  Of course this is not for the rsync release we're
> currently working on, but could be included as a patch, if desired.

I haven't looked at the implementation, but comments on the user
interface:
    1. Yes it should take a filename or - as a parameter.
    2. I don't like the idea of skipping the SRC spec.  Paths should be
	relative to the SRC.  If somebody wants to use full paths they
	can always have a SRC of "/".
    3. It should be called --files-from.
    4. --send-dirs and --no-implicit-dirs shouldn't be separate options,
	they should be automatically turned on with the --files-from option.

- Dave