Bug Report: rsync does not report symlink target changes in --stats or --itemize-changes

[schneems]

Expected

If running rsync causes a directory to change, I expect that change to show up in the output as well under --itemize-changes.

Actual

The symlink in the destination is updated on disk, but rsync reports "Number of files transferred: 0" and --itemize-changes produces no output. This makes it appear as if nothing was changed, even though the symlink was updated.

Steps to Reproduce

Create a source and destination folder. Both have a symlink but with different contents:

mkdir -p /tmp/3ab8a3f82068f55f5ea8e5b72b09b6cf; cd /tmp/3ab8a3f82068f55f5ea8e5b72b09b6cf
mkdir -p source dest

echo "outside content" > outside_file.txt
ln -sf ../outside_file.txt source/symlink.txt
ln -sf differentcontents dest/symlink.txt

Before rsync:

$ ls -laR dest/ source/
./dest:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 rschneeman  wheel   96 Jul 10 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 rschneeman  wheel  160 Jul 10 21:44 ..
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 rschneeman  wheel   17 Jul 10 21:44 symlink.txt -> differentcontents

./source:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 rschneeman  wheel   96 Jul 10 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 rschneeman  wheel  160 Jul 10 21:44 ..
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 rschneeman  wheel   19 Jul 10 21:44 symlink.txt -> ../outside_file.txt

Run rsync

$ rsync --archive --itemize-changes --verbose source/ dest/
Transfer starting: 2 files

sent 129 bytes  received 20 bytes  135454 bytes/sec
total size is 19  speedup is 0.13

After rsync:

$ ls -laR dest/ source/
./dest:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 rschneeman  wheel   96 Jul 10 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 rschneeman  wheel  160 Jul 10 21:44 ..
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 rschneeman  wheel   19 Jul 10 21:44 symlink.txt -> ../outside_file.txt

./source:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 rschneeman  wheel   96 Jul 10 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 rschneeman  wheel  160 Jul 10 21:44 ..
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 rschneeman  wheel   19 Jul 10 21:44 symlink.txt -> ../outside_file.txt

The contents are different after the rsync but there was no indication in the output that symlink.txt -> ../outside_file.txt was changed.

Version Information

$ rsync --version
openrsync: protocol version 29
rsync version 2.6.9 compatible

Context

The reason this is important for me, is I'm using --dry-run to verify that two directories are identical. I want to have a maximal comparison including filetimes and permissions, etc. I get that from rsync except for this edge case where the symlink exists, but it's different. I know that I can have rsync resolve the symlink and replace it with the actual file contents, but that's not the behavior I want.

[schneems]

I was able to get this working via brew install rsync (on a mac) which fixes the problem. I'm unsure how to install the latest version of openrsync on my mac to test if the problem persists in the latest release or not.