It preserves the owner, group, mode, and mtime of files if possible and can update programs that are executing. If no names are specified on the command line, rdist will update all of the files and directories listed in distfile . Otherwise, the argument is taken to be the name of a file to be updated or the label of a command to execute. If label and file names conflict, it is assumed to be a label. These may be used together to update specific files using specific commands.
Forces rdist to interpret the remaining arguments as a small distfile .
The equivalent distfile is as follows. Perform a binary comparison and update files if they differ rather than comparing dates and sizes. The -d option is used to define or override variable definitions in the distfile . Follow symbolic links. Copy the file that the link points to rather than the link itself.