How to rsync and grep only path of modified files in source directory

Question

Is there a way to just grep only changes ie; (add, delete, modified) and print path and file name using rsync.

I tried with below command but I am getting the path and file modified in separate line.

rsync -avnc $source $destination
source/10101/10102/10103/
source/10101/10102/10103/demo.fts

Note: There are more then thousands of sub directories in source, I want to print only files which are modified with absolute path.

Answer 1

You are getting the directory path since that directory differs in its timestamp or user/group settings or permissions compared to the directory at the target.

To stop rsync from looking at the directory timestamps, use the --omit-dir-times flag:

rsync -avc -n --omit-dir-times "$source/" "$target"

Note that rsync will not show the absolute paths of the files and directories, but the path relative to the top directory being transferred.

Using --itemize-changes (or -i) in place of --verbose (or -v), you get a lot more information about why a file is being updated on the target.

Example (with added annotations in the output):

$ rsync -ani s/ t
.d..t...... ./          # directory timestamp differs
>f+++++++++ file        # new file

$ rsync -a s/ t

$ touch s/file
$ rsync -ani s/ t
>f..t...... file        # file timestamp differs

$ echo hello >s/file
$ rsync -ani s/ t
>f.st...... file        # file size and timestamp differs

$ rsync -acni s/ t
>fcst...... file        # file size timestamp and checksum differs

$ rm s/file
$ rsync -acni s/ t
.d..t...... ./          # directory timestamp differs
$ rsync -acni --delete s/ t
*deleting   file        # file has been deleted in source
.d..t...... ./          # directory timestamp differs

See the documentation for the --itemize-changes option in the rsync manual on your system.