On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 17:43 -0400, Brian K. White wrote: > Perhaps the server side could specify all the deleted files and > directories as being excluded before they are actually removed from the > server. Then the client could use --delete but not --delete-excluded and > get essentially the optimal behavior.
Yes, that's what I meant. > But really as I already said this kind of thing is probably outside of > rsync's scope. The reason I said this could really be easily outside the > expected scope of rsync to ever provide an answer for is that this is > really pretty arbitrary high level application specific oddball > behavior. rsync for all it power and flexibility is still essentially a > low level and agnostic utility like cp or tar. It's some other higher > level script or application's job to decide what to copy and where and > when and why. It's only cp's job to copy a file as directed. > > But it's not black & white either. rsync is in fact specifically > intended to be a whole lot more than cp. It's by definition and by > design a rather more high level, feature rich, powerful, flexible tool, > and aims, and succeeds, in providing many and various ways to express > even very complex rules to govern file transfers. So it's entirely > possible to someday invent some generic feature that might be used in > any number of scenarios, and which this one might be just one example it > serves. > > Almost all of rsync's features could be argued either way, that they are > doable from without, and therefore should be done from without instead > of from within. But if that was really the only guiding principle then > rsync would not be very useful today, like a special cp with one twist, > and we'd all be using something else since most people have more complex > needs than that. Indeed. Of all the software packages I'm familiar with, rsync seems to attract this kind of debate the most often, for precisely the reasons you mention. > I don't know what your argument is really. Do you suppose I am attacking > rsync or Wayne or anyone else such that they need defending? In the first place, I'm telling you not to expect Wayne to change his decision. I'm not sure I would defend it per se, but I have gained a great deal of respect for his approach of being selective about features and working to make the ones that are there as robust as possible. If you think a different maintenance approach would give a product that is better for some set of purposes, it is your prerogative to try it, in collaboration with anyone you think might have similar goals. -- Matt -- Please use reply-all for most replies to avoid omitting the mailing list. To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
