As described in the thread news://news.gmane.org:119/g4sscf$ha0$1@ger.gmane.org, I’d like an option similor to --keep-dirlinks for files also.

From my original post there:

I just read the thread http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2004-June/009678.html which describes how --keep-dirlinks came to be.  My use case is similar, but I’d like a similar option for files as well.

Setup: in my public_html I have some symlinks which I send over as files, with -L (for various reasons: partly, because they are copies of current work which is done elsewhere, or because several websites use the same files, such as SSI footers).  However, I also want to check whether my colleague changed the files on the server, so first I do an update.  However, this replaces the links with the files themselves.

My current usage is:

# First look whether stuff changed on the other side (shouldn’t)
# rsync -rtKPuzb webserver:public_html/ /home/hendrik/public_html/Hendrik/
# Then put changes from here.
rsync -rtkKLPzC --delete --delete-excluded --exclude-from=/home/hendrik/.website-exclude /home/hendrik/public_html/Hendrik/ webserver:public_html

As you can see, I have the first line commented out, because it replaces symlinks.  I’d like something similar to --keep-dirlinks which follows links on the receiver and compares the files linked to with those sent.