February 3, 2010 — My post on deploying a website using rsync has gotten quite a few hits.

I thought I'd add some more tips:

• use the "--delete" option if you want to delete files on the destination directory that no longer exist in the source directory.
• add "$1" after your options like this:

Then you can easily do a DRY RUN. Just type:

The n will get substituted for $1.

I've found a lot of times rsync appears to be copying the same files over and over.

There are a few things you can do to troubleshoot when rsync recopies the same files.

The options that I've found come in real handy are:

• 1. The i option, which shows you why a file is being copied (all pluses means rsync thinks it doesn't exist in the destination; t means the times differ; s means the contents differ (?)).
• 2. The --modify-window=1 option. This lets you ignore differences in modified timestamps. You can set 1 to a high number to ignore large differences.