rclonesync does not sync empty directories

When syncing a local directory with a (Google Drive) remote, empty directories that exist either on Path1 or Path2 are not being created on the other. While for “end user files” this behavior might be acceptable, especially folder structures that belong to programs might expect empty directories to be in place.

Edit: Adding --rclone-args --create-empty-src-dirs as last parameter unfortunately does not solve the issue, as --create-empty-src-dirs is not a global rclone parameter. This results in rclone lsl returning an error.

[cjnaz]

This sequence may get you close to what you need

1) rclonesync <path1> <path2>
2) rclone copy <path1> <path2> --filter "+ */" --filter "- **" --create-empty-src-dirs
3) rclone copy <path2> <path1> --filter "+ */" --filter "- **" --create-empty-src-dirs

The filtering in line 2 first includes all directories in path1, and then excludes everything else in path1. The empty directories in path1 are created on path2. The filtering on line 3 does the same for path2 to path1.

The limitation is that empty directories only accumulate, and must be manually deleted on both sides. You could use rlconesync’s --remove-empty-directories switch to clean them out of both paths, or rclone’s rmdirs command.

[cjnaz]

Did you try the --remove-empty-directories switch?