Possibile rsync --link-dest or --compare-dest bug

[Wayne Davison]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 09:33:42PM +0100, jan wrote:
> -bash-3.1$ rsync -av --link-dest=20080313/
> --compare-dest=/data/BOC55/20080313/ 20080313/ /data/BOC55/20080314/

That set of options is impossible since you can't mix --link-dest with
--compare-dest.  Back in the days of 2.6.3, rsync would silently allow
the latter --*-dest arg to replace the former arg, while retaining the
idea that you wanted to do a --link-dest (due to the prior arg setting a
flag), so that impossible syntax was equivalent to using --link-dest
with the second arg.

> --compare-dest arg does not exist: 20080313/

That's not a bug, that's rsync being helpful.  All modern versions of
rsync let you specify more than one --link-dest (or other --*-dest)
directory to scan (as long as they are of the same type).  Beginning
with 3.0.0, if you specify a directory that does not exist, rsync is
nice enough to let you know so you can fix it.

It looks like you just want a single --link-dest=/data/BOC55/20080313
arg in your above command.

..wayne..