How to make rsync display only files being copied, not all the folders which are scanned?

Question

My weekly backup script contains a bunch of bash statements like these:

rsync -va /source_path/ /destination_path/

Now, this works great but the -v (verbose) option doesn't behave exactly like I want. What I want is that it should display only the changed files which are being copied, and not each and every folder it scans.

For example, if document1 and document2 folders are unchanged, but a file is changed in document3, then the display will be as follows:

document1/
document2/
document3/
document3/foo.txt

If I omit the -v option altogether, its totally silent and doesn't display anything at all. I want the output display but I'm only interested in the last line (foo.txt) which is the file being copied, not the dozens of folders which rsync scans such as document1, document2, etc.

Is there any way to do it?

Answer 1

Your description is already how rsync works. The only files it displays with -v are ones that it is either transferring or changing. So each time it runs, it sees there is some difference with the directories.

A common reason for this is that the source and destination are on different filesystems and the ownership or permissions can't be copied exactly, and each invocation is trying to do so.

To confirm this, run the rsync with -i (or --itemize-changes). This will display a code that shows the reason rsync has decided the file needs work. If its an ownership or something (and you decide you don't need this information), you can turn off the syncing of it with --no-owner or similar.