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

[Ian! D. Allen]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 02:19:41PM -0400, Ian! D. Allen wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 07:51:35AM -0700, Wayne Davison wrote:
> > This is because --min-size is a transfer rule, not an exclude rule.
> 
> There is no mention of the concept of "transfer rule" in the rsync
> man page.

There is another oblique reference to "transfer rule" in --compare-dest
for which I offer this man page clarification:

--compare-dest=DIR
    This transfer rule instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination
    machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files
    against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination
    directory).  If a file is found in DIR that is identical to the
    sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination
    directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files
    that have changed from an earlier backup, though all the directories
    in the file-list will still be created (most of them likely empty).
    Unlike a filter/exclude rule, this option does not affect the
    file-list, so --prune-empty-dirs will not work with this option.

-m, --prune-empty-dirs
    This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty directories
    from the file-list, including nested directories that have no
    non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the creation of
    a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is recursively
    scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter rules. It
    does not prevent the creation of empty directories that result
    from the use of transfer rules such as --max-size, --min-size,
    or --compare-dest, since transfer rules do not affect the file-list.

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