Option --numeric-ids not the default?

[Werner Maier]

Hi,

>> > I've browsed the history of the list, but can't seem to find
>> > an answer to something that I find quite surprising - why
>> > isn't --numeric-ids the default when rsync is told to
>> > preserve permissions?

because all archive-tools do preserve the rights linked to the
username and not linked to the uid.

e.g. for TAR you need --numeric-owner, if you don't want to
change the uid.

I find this behaviour quite useful, if you have more than one
box, maybe different *nix distribuitions, but files owned by
user X belong to user X on the other box, even or especially
when they don't have the same UID there.

Preserving uids with --numeric-ids seems to me more a special
case - used with rsnapshot, for example, or for using
rsync when booting from a rescure-linux-cd like knoppix, or
similar, that use different usernames/ids.

regards.

Werner Maier.
--
Werner Maier, Dipl.-Ing. Univ.         Friedrich-Bergius-Ring 15
fidion GmbH                            97076 Würzburg