It will be very helpful to have the ability to include information about the modification time of the files. This will help in (1) creating customized update file list (for --files-from) (2) for logging. Something like '%M'. Any datetime format will work (either the Unix, or the standard YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS). The problem that I'm trying to address is the maintainance of a backup site in a high-traffic environment. The update should handle high priority files first (priority is based on file age (recent changes first), file size (small changes first), and file name/type (for example: PDF files last). If the information about the source files is available, one can use "rsync -n" to get the list of files, implement a custom sort/filter, and feed the list to rsync --from-file session. Extra points for showing the comparable time on the recieving side (if the file exists), and for option to show the file owner (id/name)
Makes sense to me. Since we already allow the user to output the length, why not the modtime, uid, gid, and the mode-bits too while we're at it. (I didn't go for the "extra points", since outputting receiver-side attributes would be a lot more complicated to code up.) I've checked-in a change to the CVS version.