fix: rclone bisync --create-empty-src-dirs flag not available in older versions #472
Description
Problem
Users running older versions of rclone (e.g., v1.60.1) get an error when running bisync commands:
2025/12/20 16:31:13 Fatal error: unknown flag: --create-empty-src-dirs
The --create-empty-src-dirs flag was added to rclone bisync after v1.60. Users on Linux distributions with older package managers may have older rclone versions installed.
Reported via Discord by Nate (running Raspberry Pi with rclone v1.60.1-DEV).
Solution
Detect rclone version at runtime and only include the --create-empty-src-dirs flag if the installed version supports it (v1.64+).
def get_rclone_version() -> tuple[int, int, int] | None:
"""Get rclone version as (major, minor, patch) tuple."""
try:
result = subprocess.run(["rclone", "version"], capture_output=True, text=True)
match = re.search(r'v(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)', result.stdout)
if match:
return int(match.group(1)), int(match.group(2)), int(match.group(3))
except Exception:
pass
return NoneImpact
- Users with older rclone: bisync works, but empty directories won't be propagated (minor inconvenience)
- Users with newer rclone: full functionality including empty directory propagation
Related
- Consider documenting minimum rclone version requirements
- Consider testing/documenting Linux homebrew support: https://github.com/basicmachines-co/homebrew-basic-memory