rsync - Nov 2007 - rsync-ing from two locations with same filenames (at different versions)

Hello,

I would like to have a full repository, say, holding files
   full/a.txt (version 1)
   full/b.txt (version 1)
   full/c.txt (version 1)
and a repository of updates, for example
   new/b.txt (version 2 - newer)

Then, I would like to call
   rsync [flags] new/ full/ destination
to get
   destination/a.txt (v.1)
   destination/b.txt (v.2)
   destination/c.txt (v.1)

This simple case works OK and consistently.

However, the following case fails:

mkdir -p full/dir1
mkdir -p full/dir2
mkdir -p new/dir1
# also, is there a way to ask rsync to ignore this location if it doesn't
exist?
mkdir -p new/dir2

echo "a" > full/dir1/a.txt
echo "b1" > full/dir1/b.txt
echo "c" > full/dir1/a.txt
echo "d" > full/dir2/a.txt
echo "b2" > new/dir1/b.txt

rsync -rpztlv --delete full/dir1/ full/dir2/ dest
rsync -rpztlv --delete new/dir1/ new/dir2/ full/dir1/ full/dir2/ dest

dest/b.txt now contains "b1", which is the wrong one. Is there a way
to force rsync to take b.txt from "new/dir1/b.txt" instead of taking
if from "full/dir1/b.txt"?

Thanks a lot,
     Mojca

On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 14:39 +0100, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> However, the following case fails:
> 
> mkdir -p full/dir1
> mkdir -p full/dir2
> mkdir -p new/dir1
> # also, is there a way to ask rsync to ignore this location if it
doesn't exist?
Unfortunately not.  I agree that this feature is useful, and I might
implement it at some point as a patch.
> mkdir -p new/dir2
> 
> echo "a" > full/dir1/a.txt
> echo "b1" > full/dir1/b.txt
> echo "c" > full/dir1/a.txt
> echo "d" > full/dir2/a.txt
> echo "b2" > new/dir1/b.txt
> 
> rsync -rpztlv --delete full/dir1/ full/dir2/ dest
> rsync -rpztlv --delete new/dir1/ new/dir2/ full/dir1/ full/dir2/ dest
> 
> dest/b.txt now contains "b1", which is the wrong one. Is there a
way
> to force rsync to take b.txt from "new/dir1/b.txt" instead of
taking
> if from "full/dir1/b.txt"?
All that is going on here is that, if you run the sequence of commands
quickly, the files containing "b1" and "b2" pass the quick
check with
each other because they have the same size and mtime.  Thus, even though
the second rsync run does have the "b2" file in its file-list, it
incorrectly assumes the destination file (which contains "b1" from the
first run) does not need to be updated.  To avoid this problem, use
--checksum or --ignore-times.

Matt