purge-empty-dirs and max-file-size confusion

[Wayne Davison]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 02:20:37AM -0400, Ian! D. Allen wrote:
> I want to use --min-size to copy just large files (and their necessary
> parent directories), but everything I've tried copies *all* the source
> directories, and creates them empty on the destination even if they
> don't have any big files in them.  I only want the minimal directory
> hierarchies that contain the big files.

This is because --min-size is a transfer rule, not an exclude rule.  An
exclude rule would affect deletions, and --min-size just affects what is
transferred out of the full set of files that are present.  Thus, the
dirs with smaller files are not actually empty, they just don't have any
files that match the transfer rule.

There is not currently a way include/exclude files based on size in
rsync.

..wayne..