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

[Harry Putnam]

Matt McCutchen <matt at mattmccutchen.net> writes:

First a comment:  You have far more expertise than I in all the many
things that come into play in this kind of endeavor.  So any opinions
I have or have posted should be taken with a large grain of salt.

> On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 14:57 -0600, Harry Putnam wrote:
>> Matt McCutchen <matt at mattmccutchen.net> writes:
>> > You know, there are two-way synchronization tools such as unison
>> > ( http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ ) that are designed for
>> > this situation and would make your job much easier.
>> 
>> I was experimenting with unison when I hit on the scheme I laid out.
>> I thought unison was pretty punky compared to rsync.
>> 
>> Unless you use the gui version you never see the big picture.  The gui
>> is pretty lame too, but mostly it isn't an option very often.

> What's wrong with the GUI?  I used it for a few weeks when I was making
> the transition from one machine to another and needed to keep certain
> directories synchronized between the two; I thought it worked fine.

Well, first and foremost the gui is not an option usually.  
Other things:  It strays from the normal unix way of doing
documentation and has neither manpage or info.
(It does have doumentation available though)

I suppose most of my objections are based on the fact that I have some
comfort with rsync from yrs of light usage... but just now trying to
find out how to ignore files in unison.. I'm all bogged down in
preliminaries and have yet to find a clear command line reference to
ignore file/directories.  (I've only spent minutes and am sure its in
the manual but ...) if I need something like that about rsync its right
handy in man rsync grep exclude.

I'd have to download a pdf of unisons manual then install something to
read it with..  go gui, and diddle around for days with the
documentation to get to the same place and capablity I already have
with rsync.

Beyond that it appears to deal with files one at a time and I need to
make decisions about them.  Even in the gui that appears to be the
case.

I don't really want to make indiviual decisions... I want to see a
herd of file names, then I'll know which way to run one global command
and get the job done.

[...]

I'll have to take a more complete look at unison and
experiment... spend the time getting familiar and maybe in a week or
two be able to do what I do now with a couple of rsync commands.

However, it may well be worth it... and I'll get that done sooner or
later.

And I thank you for your time and good information.