--compare-dest; I'm missing the boat

[Matt McCutchen]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 18:04 -0800, Wayne Davison wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 06:11:36PM -0600, Harry Putnam wrote:
> > In other words the full directory structure minus any plain files.
> 
> Right, that's what compare-dest does.  It only copies changed files,
> omitting all files that haven't changed between the source and the
> alternate destination.

I think Harry's complaint is about the existence of the directories, not
the nonexistence of the files.

I believe it's by design that rsync creates a directory (call it D) in
the destination even if D is matched in a compare-dest directory.  If
rsync skipped the creation of D but later found out that a file inside
needed to be transferred, rsync would have to go back and and create D,
looking up the correct attributes and handling itemization and the
possibility of failure.  It would be possible to implement this, but I
don't care to do it; rsync is convoluted enough as it is.

-- 
Matt