Does "--files-from" do anything useful?

[Manoj Joseph]

Cameron Laird wrote:
> I haven't been able to get "--files-from" to do anything useful; every
> combination I've tried, with all recent releases of rsync, just yields
> me a "syntax error" or worse.  I'd welcome even a single example of
> its correct usage, or a pointer to a tutorial which supplies the same.

How about this:

$ DIR=`pwd`
$ mkdir src
$ mkdir tgt
$ touch src/a
$ touch src/b
$ touch src/c
$ ls src
a  b  c
$ cd src; find . > $DIR/files; cd ..
$ cat $DIR/files
.
./a
./b
./c
$ rsync --files-from=$DIR/files src tgt
$ ls tgt
a  b  c

You could, for instance, use e2scan to generate a list of files that
have changed and feed the list to rsync.

HTH

-M