--delete problem

[Paul Slootman]

On Tue 26 Jul 2005, jdd sur free wrote:
> 
> testing rsync, I use the following line:
> 
> rsync   --rsync-path=/usr/bin/rsync -e ssh --delete  -valptz 
>  --safe-links * jdd at mecum:~/temp/test
> 
> between a mandrake 10.1 and a suse 9.0

Why use "*" and not "." ?

> a create a dummy file in start dir, run rsync, file is 
> transfered.
> I delete the file in start dir, run rsync, the file is _not_ 
> delete on the other side.

The --delete option only deletes stuff that doesn't exist in directories
being transferred; the manpage says:

    This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side
    (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories
    that are being  syn- chronized.   You must have asked rsync to send
    the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without  using a
    wildcard  for  the directory's  contents (e.g.  "dir/*") since  the
    wildcard  is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to
    transfer individual files, not the files' parent directory.

That says it all!


Paul Slootman