rsync - Oct 2024 - Is there any easy way to set some default rsync options?

I use rsync a lot, it's a wonderful tool.

I use it almost exclusively on Linux systems and it would be really
handy if I could set a number of options which would always be used
when I run rsync.  These would be in addition to -a which is useful
but not quite enough.

In particular I always want to copy extended attributes (-X), ACLs
(-A) and hardlinks (-H).  

I've recently lost a number of extended attributes (not a huge amount
but I'd prefer not to repeat the loss).  This was almost certainly a
result of them being lost when I used rsync to copy some files around.

So, is there any way to set some parameters system-wide such that
rsync will always use them without them being explicitly set when it's
called?

The only way I can think of at the moment is to have a wrapper script
(or bash function) for rsync that sets the parameters I want.  It
feels that there should be a better way, is there?

-- 
Chris Green

On Wed 16 Oct 2024, Chris Green via rsync wrote:
> 
> I use it almost exclusively on Linux systems and it would be really
> handy if I could set a number of options which would always be used
> when I run rsync.  These would be in addition to -a which is useful
> but not quite enough.
> 
> In particular I always want to copy extended attributes (-X), ACLs
> (-A) and hardlinks (-H).  
> 
> I've recently lost a number of extended attributes (not a huge amount
> but I'd prefer not to repeat the loss).  This was almost certainly a
> result of them being lost when I used rsync to copy some files around.
> 
> So, is there any way to set some parameters system-wide such that
> rsync will always use them without them being explicitly set when it's
> called?
Search the rsync manual page for popt .
You can "overload" the -a option to include the extra options you
need;
create a file .popt in your home directory and add a line:

rsync alias -a -aXAH


Paul