Bug 2374 - Discrepancy in --exclude-from option between Gnu tar and rsync
Summary: Discrepancy in --exclude-from option between Gnu tar and rsync
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: rsync
Classification: Unclassified
Component: core (show other bugs)
Version: 2.6.3
Hardware: x86 Linux
: P3 enhancement (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Wayne Davison
QA Contact: Rsync QA Contact
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2005-02-22 05:40 UTC by Eric Maryniak
Modified: 2005-02-22 10:19 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Eric Maryniak 2005-02-22 05:40:39 UTC
Dear reader,
We have a home-brewed backup program that uses (for certain dirs) tar and (for
others) rsync as backup program, and use a generic mechanism (if a (touched)
.exclude file exists in a particular subdir) to build up a list of files to
exclude, that we subsequently feed to tars or rsyncs '--exclude-from' option.
I noticed a discrepancy, however, in its use:

o tar:
  --exclude-from FILE
o rsync:
  --exclude-from=FILE

Is this intentional?
My request is to allow '--exclude-from FILE' for rsync, too.
Rationale: orthogonality and consistency in (Gnu type) options w/r to tar and
rsync. Note that files with spaces still need to be protected in both manners.
Comment 1 Wayne Davison 2005-02-22 09:45:37 UTC
Rsync already allows both --OPTION=ARG and --OPTION ARG for its options that
take args.  Your bigger problem is that the exclude files themselves aren't
parsed the same way by the two programs, though there may be some amount of overlap.
Comment 2 Eric Maryniak 2005-02-22 10:19:39 UTC
Tnx & exsqueeze me, must have overlooked that in the man page.
W/r to different parsing of the exclude files by tar and rsync: I realize that
and in the way we've programmed our backup script, that doesn't matter: although
we backup with -R, we use '/usr/local/blackboard/' (note heading and trailing
slash) patterns, as it's matched against the transfer root.