I am using rsync 3.0.9 protocol version 30 from the cygwin package rsync-3.0.9-1 under Windows 7. $ cd /tmp $ mkdir c d $ rsync --recursive –-verbose c d rsync: link_stat "/tmp/–-verbose" failed: No such file or directory (2) rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at /home/lapo/package/rsync-3.0.9-1/src/rsync-3.0.9/main.c(1052) [sender=3.0.9] $ rsync --verbose --recursive c d sending incremental file list sent 32 bytes received 13 bytes 90.00 bytes/sec total size is 0 speedup is 0.00 Obviously "--verbose" is interpreted as a file name in the first example. If this is intended, then this behavior needs to be documented on the man page. If this is a compile mistake on cygwin's part, I'll be happy to report it there.
Please verify that you actually used --verbose. One of the dashes in your post is not a dash character. This may have been a paste error but it seems likely to be the problem.
You are correct, mistake on my part: retyping the two dashes resolves the issue.