Keep bootable backup with rsync [closed]

I've ditched Carbon Copy Cloner now that it went commercial, well I felt guilty about using a closed source application anyways.

What rsync options do you prefer when maintaining your bootable backups?

rsync -avhHXR --delete --progress --hfs-compression --protect-decmpfs --stats --exclude=/Volumes / /Volumes/Backup

Just by way of explanation : Any large recursive backup wants the archive option -a of course. And ideally the -H option for hard-links. We need -R and --exclude=/Volumes since we're using / as the source. We want --delete to delete files not present on the source. All the option -vh, --progress, and --stats only impact the display. And -X, --hfs-compression, and --protect-decmpfs preserve various HFS+ features.

Add a -n for testing before running the actual backup of course.

Just a few questions :

In Linux, you might want -S for sparse files, but afaik HFS+ lacks sparse files anyways. I'd leave out -A too since HFS+ lacks acls too. I presume that's correct?

Are there any benefits to --inplace? Would it reduce wear? It's slightly risky if the transfer breaks perhaps. It conflicts with -S in Linux, btw.

Am I missing anything particularly useful here?

Anything about making a new disk bootable that isn't bootable already?

Solution 1:

Just found an open source backup script Counterpart (jedda.me) which does exactly this, seemingly does stuff CCC misses too.