Rsync -u option

[Tommy Trussell]

2009/3/26 Markus Schönhaber <ubuntu-users at list-post.mks-mail.de>:
> Matthew Flaschen:
>
>> Does the rsync -u option consider mtime (modification time) or atime
>> (access time)?  I had been thinking it was mtime, but now I'm not so sure...
>
> Judging from man rsync
>
> |-u, --update
> |       This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the  destina‐
> |       tion  and  have  a  modified  time that is newer than the source
> |       file.  (If an existing destination file has a modification  time
> |       equal  to the source file’s, it will be updated if the sizes are
> |       different.)
>
> it seems to me that mtime is indeed what counts (as I, too, was thinking).

it would be easy to test -- because if rsync used atime, the second
time you ran it ALL of the files would be marked for update on the
destination.