I'm giving rsync multiple source directories, to make it merge several directories into one.
By experiment (and reading --debug output), it seems that if a filename appears in more than one source directory, the file in the source named _earlier_ on the command line "wins". Eg: % mkdir -p dir1/sub dir2/sub % echo first > dir1/sub/foo.txt % echo second > dir2/sub/foo.txt % rsync -r dir1/sub dir2/sub . % cat sub/foo.txt first % rsync -r dir2/sub dir1/sub . % cat sub/foo.txt second (I have rsync 3.1.1) My question is whether I can rely on this behaviour not changing: it's a little surprising, as it's the opposite of what (coreutils) 'cp -r' does. The closest thing I can find in the manpage is this text: | Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal transfer | list. This handles the merging together of the contents of identically | named directories, makes it easy to remove duplicate filenames, and | may confuse someone when the files are transferred in a different | order than what was given on the command-line. That documents the order in which differently-named files are processed, and suggests that letting rsync see duplicate filenames is supported, but doesn't specify the priority of the 'candidates' for a given named file. -M- -- 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
