feature request: add -a to scp for archive-style copy

[Jim Knoble]

Circa 2002-Feb-20 13:37:06 -0500 dixit Joe Harrington:

: This is a feature request for scp.  scp has no easy option to copy
: symlinks, etc. to reproduce a directory tree.  The -r option follows
: symlinks and reads the data out of device files when copying.  A few
: years ago, the -a option was added to normal cp, replacing the
: cumbersome and arcane
  [...]

'cp -a', to my knowledge, only works with the cp from GNU fileutils.

I recommend using 'rsync -a'---it does exactly what you ask.  In fact,
i recommend using rsync instead of scp for almost all cases, in
particular because it avoids potential problems with SSHv1/SSHv2
compatibility when one of the client/server pair is OpenSSH and the
other is SSH.com's.

-- 
jim knoble | jmknoble at pobox.com | http://www.pobox.com/~jmknoble/