rsync - Dec 2021 - --copy-unsafe-links unexpected behavior with unsafe symlinks

Hello all

I have a problem with the --copy-unsafe-links option. My environment is
presented and the end of the message. I have the following directory
structure (I hope the that it will be visible; commands below)

TST/
+-- outside1
|??? |
|??? +-- outside1-file.txt
|
+-- outside2-file.txt
|
+-- tree
 ???? +-- inside.txt
 ???? |
 ???? +-- lnk-ans.txt -> ../../ans.txt
 ???? |
 ???? +-- o1-file.txt -> ../outside1/outside1-file.txt
 ???? |
 ???? +-- o1-folder -> ../outside1
 ???? |
 ???? +-- o2-file.txt -> ../outside2-file.txt

The directory structure can be created with the following commands:

mkdir -p TST/outside1 TST/tree
echo "outside1" > TST/outside1/outside1-file.txt
echo "outside2" > TST/outside2-file.txt
echo "inside"? > TST/tree/inside.txt
(cd TST/tree/; ln -s ../outside1 ./o1-folder; ln -s
../outside1/outside1-file.txt ./o1-file.txt;)
(cd TST/tree/; ln -s ../outside2-file.txt ./o2-file.txt;)
(cd TST/tree/; ln -s ../../ans.txt ./lnk-ans.txt)

Now if I execute the commands

$ cd TST
$ rsync --copy-unsafe-links -avz --delete tree XXX

 ? sending incremental file list
 ? copying unsafe symlink "tree/lnk-ans.txt" ->
"../../ans.txt"
 ? created directory XXX
 ? tree/
 ? tree/inside.txt
 ? tree/lnk-ans.txt
 ? tree/o1-file.txt -> ../outside1/outside1-file.txt
 ? tree/o1-folder -> ../outside1
 ? tree/o2-file.txt -> ../outside2-file.txt

 ? sent 440 bytes? received 93 bytes? 1,066.00 bytes/sec
 ? total size is 147? speedup is 0.28

As we can see from the output rsync makes a copy of tree/lnk-ans.txt
According to the documentation this is correct. --copy-unsafe-links
instructs rsync to make copies of the files outside the copied tree.

But the same should happen for

 ??? tree/o1-file.txt
 ??? tree/o1-folder
 ??? tree/o2-file.txt

because all these symlinks point outside tree.

am I missing something? Is this the intended behavior? According to
the documentation (man rsync) I think it is not.

Thank you very much.
Cristian



-------- BEGIN ENVIRONMNENT ---------

$ rsync --version
rsync? version 3.1.3? protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2018 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
 ??? 64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
 ??? socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
 ??? append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes, prealloc
Operating System: Debian 10

-------- END ENVIRONMNENT ---------

On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 12:53 PM Cristian via rsync <rsync at
lists.samba.org>
wrote:
> $ rsync --copy-unsafe-links -avz --delete tree XXX
>
In this case, the "tree" directory is a part of the transfer inside
the
top-of-transfer dir (the current directory). Thus any symlinks that don't
try to escape the current directory are considered to be OK.  You should
instead suffix "tree" with a slash and add "tree" to your
destination path:

$ rsync --copy-unsafe-links -aivz --delete tree/ host:/old/path/tree/

This is discussed in the man page
<https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1> (search for
"unsafe").

..wayne..
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