rsync doesn't delete files in destination directory

Question

The following rsync command does not delete files in destination directory

rsync -avr --delete [email protected]:/home/hulio/hotspots_test/* /home/zsumo/hotpoint/data  

How can I solve it?

Answer 1

The problem with the command, is that it includes * in hotspots_test/*

The command rsync --delete doesn't work with wildcard entries

rsync man

--delete

This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole directory (e.g. lqdirrq or lqdir/rq) without using a wildcard for the directory's contents (e.g. lqdir/*rq) since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are also excluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).