On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:58:19 -0500
Matt McCutchen <matt@mattmccutchen.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 02:22 +0100, Donald Axel wrote:
> > Quoting man page:
> >
> > In the currently implementation, a difference of file
format is
> > always considered to be important enough for an update,
no matter
> > what date is on the objects. In other words, if the
source has a
> > directory or a symlink where the destination has a
file, the
> > transfer would occur regardless of the timestamps.
This might
> > change in the future (feel free to comment on this on
the mailing
> > list if you have an opinion).
> >
> > Comment: -u should preferably mean "update" only if
target is older.
> >
> >
> > Actually I found out by experimenting that rsync may overwrite
> > anything different at the target.
> >
> > Using the -u option as "only if newer" would be analogous
with zip,
> > unzip and cp and probably many other program.
>
> OK...could you give us a concrete example in which it is helpful to have
> the straight "only if newer" behavior instead of the current one?
Yes, I can: If this answer is too long, please excuse me - I am
relaxing when I write:-)
I am sometimes (every year or so:) using e.g. pdcrypt or a script for
making Xen-guests for some specific course, and I have
modified/improved the script. However, there are more than two machines
on which I run the script, and it all works nicely until at some
point where I need to correct some typo in some trap or error
handler. Normally I distribute the script from system uffe.ruc.dk but
for some reasone I need to do things fast and edit the script on
rolf.ruc.dk in stead. Stupid, yes! but the outcome is a working setup
and a happy family when I come home not too late.
I now have (at least) two variants. I want to remerge the source, and
as usual I do not want to trust my memory 100% when there have been 117
interruptions and questions while I was working; so I copy source to a
workstation (e.g. dax:/sysadm/master, dax:/sysadm/uffe, dax:/sysadm/rolf).
In order to get the corrected version into the "mastersource" I use
cp -upRiv /sysadm/{rolf and so on} /sysadm/master
But instead, maybe I could use an -u option for rsync to accomplish the same:
cd /sysadm/master
rsync -av -u uffe:/source/ dax:/sysadm/master
rsync -av -u rolf:/source/ dax:/sysadm/master
rsync -av -u some-third-machine:/source/ dax:/sysadm/master
... etc.
Maybe there are other ways to accomplish the same, SVN or CVS maybe?
And maybe that would be a better solution in the long run, but I am not
sure at the moment that SVN is an option.
Thanks for reading, I hope it was not too long after all:-)
Regards/Donald Axel
--
http://akira.ruc.dk/~donax -- Donald Axel --
http://journalistik.ruc.dk/~donax/weblog