Update rsync on OSX with Homebrew

Quick guide on Homebrew and installing the latest version of rsync.

Once it is installed, the rsync guide covers the commands for actually syncing files.

I had to fiddle around and Google a bit to get the rsync installed via Homebrew, so I thought I'll write about it.

apt-get is a package manager for Ubuntu and Debian, whereas homebrew is for Mac OS X.

Install Homebrew

If you haven’t already, install it by pasting this to your terminal prompt (check brew.sh):

$ curl -fsSL -o install.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh

Use it

homebrew works in a similar fashion as apt-get, the command is brew. You can search for a package:

$ brew search rsync

Then install it:

$ brew install rsync

Make rsync work

After installation process, check the rsync version:

$ rsync --version
rsync  version 2.7.0

Despite installing the latest version, for me it showed the old version 2.7.0 (at the time of writing this the latest is 3.1). To solve it: I popped open /private/etc/paths file and moved the line /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin. It should look something like this:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

Hope this helped :)