How to keep the full path with rsync?

Use the -R or --relative option to preserve the full path.

Another common related use case it to keep a selected part of the directory tree with /./, e.g. if you wanted:

/home/udi/files/pictures

to go to:

backup/files/pictures

you can write:

rsync --relative /home/udi/./files/pictures backup

The magic /./ gets specially parsed by rsync before it passes that path to the system calls, and tells it where to start creating directories from. The /./ means nothing for other POSIX utilities in general, e.g. the path a/./b is the same as a/b in POSIX.

With the Cygwin Windows rsync, and assuming the remote rsync is pointing to the root, I'd do:

rsync -vtrz --delete server::rsyncid/home/udi/files/pictures /cygdrive/d/backup/home/udi/files

That will put the contents of the remote pictures directory in /backup/home/udi/files/pictures. Presumably the syntax under unix would be similar.

JR