rsync - May 2007 - rsync feature needed: preserve atime

Often we need to preserve the information atime conveys, but I have found
no way to get rsync to preserve this, nor any hint it is being worked on.
It would be great if 'rsync -t' also set atime not just mtime -- or
maybe a
new option is desired for atime.

I don't know if the -X mentioned in "NEWS file from CVS" covers
this:
> Added the --xattrs (-X) option to preserver extended attributes.
but if so, it would be helpful if atime were explicitly mentioned.

 ---   Brent

On 5/8/07, Brent Thompson <brent@kanha.hpl.hp.com>
wrote:
> Often we need to preserve the information atime conveys, but I have found
> no way to get rsync to preserve this, nor any hint it is being worked on.
> It would be great if 'rsync -t' also set atime not just mtime -- or
maybe a
> new option is desired for atime.
The standard version of rsync does not support preserving atimes, but
the rsync source distribution includes a patch "patches/atimes.diff"
that adds an option --atimes to preserve atimes.  I recommend you
compile your own copy of rsync including this patch (reply if you need
help/instructions for this) and then use it with its --atimes option.

Matt