[gentoo-user] Symlinked directories and rsync

[Walter Dnes]

I've RTFM'd, and it looks like there is no way to get rsync to copy
over symlinked directories as symlinks.  E.g. I build Pale Moon browser
from source for 3 machines at home.  I prefer downloading the source
once and symlinking to it from 3 different working directories.  I also
have a personal project where I analyze the same text data files in 3
different ways.  It makes things so much simpler to use the same code,
with different runtime parameters.  So I symlink the main data directory
to 3 working directories.  Even "better" (or worse) I've got a situation
where I symlink directories to... other symlinked directories.  Yes;
symlinks pointing to symlinks work, even for directories.

  Unfortunately, rsync will not create a symlink where appropriate, but
will de-reference the symlink, and duplicate multiple gigabytes of data
needlessly.  I eventually gave up trying, and made a tarball, and pushed
it over to my "hot backup" machine, and extracted it there.  That works
OK for the initial setup, but is painfull for "minor incremental"
updates.

  Am I missing something glaringly obvious, or is this a limitation of
rsync?  If so, is there another tool that can copy over symlinked
directories properly?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications