I'm using the PHP Symfony framework's rsync application publication feature to publish an application from my development box to a ~archives/symfony directory on our production box. This invokes the following rsync command:

rsync --progress --dry-run -azC --force --delete --exclude-from=config/rsync_exclude.txt -e ssh ./ archives@archivesofdevelopment.org:symfony/

I notice that when the ~archives/symfony directory doesn't already exist on the production box, rsync will delete all files and directories in the parent directory (in our case ~archives). Once I create the ~archives/symfony directory, rsync correctly copies ./* from the development box to ~archives/symfony, without touching anything else in ~archives on the production box.

I've been over the man page, especially the parts about a trailing slash on the source, and I believe this behavior is a bug. For instance, rsync's syntax is supposed to be somewhat analogous to rcp/scp where "scp -r . archives@archivesofdevelopment.org:symfony" would copy the working directory to ~archives/symfony, without touching anything else in ~archives.

Also, the local analogy:

rsync --progress --dry-run -azC --force --delete --exclude-from=config/rsync_exclude.txt -e ssh ./ /tmp/symfony/

copies the working directory to /tmp/symfony, without touching anything else in /tmp.

The local version of rsync is: rsync  version 2.6.9  protocol version 29

The remote version is: rsync  version 2.6.3  protocol version 28

Thanks, Jack