Subject: rsync: fails to honour a tilde (~) in --log-file option

From: Dave <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:55:52 -0500

Package: rsync
Version: 3.1.3-6
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
Normal rsync local system directory copying/archiving using the '--log-file' option

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

1. Executing "rsync -a --verbose --log-file=~/xx/mylog ~/xxxx ~/xx"
Resulted in:
 rsync: failed to open log-file ~/xx/mylog: No such file or directory (2)
 Ignoring "log file" setting.
 sending incremental file list
 xxxx/
 xxxx/20211230171244.mkv
...snip normal output...
 xxxx/xx/20220212123456-mask2.xcf

 sent 2,687,537 bytes  received 222 bytes  5,375,518.00 bytes/sec
 total size is 2,686,183  speedup is 1.00

Note the error output and 'Ignoring "log file" setting.' line when the --logfile option contained a tilde: '--log-file=~/xx/mylog'
Also note that the source and destination directories do contain the tilde (~).
No log file was produced anywhere on the local system. (The directory archive was successful.)

2. Executing "rsync -a --verbose --log-file=xx/mylog ~/xxxx ~/xx" (relative directory)
or with '--log-file=/home/myid/xx/mylog' (fully qualified path) resulted in the expected logging operation. 

If the tilde is honoured in the arguments, shouldn't it also be honoured in the options?

Thanx.

-- System Information:
Distributor ID:	Devuan
Description:	Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf)
Release:	3
Codename:	beowulf
Architecture: x86_64

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-14-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages rsync depends on:
ii  base-files           10.3+devuan3.5
ii  init-system-helpers  1.56+nmu1+devuan3
ii  libacl1              2.2.53-4
ii  libattr1             1:2.4.48-4
ii  libc6                2.28-10
ii  libpopt0             1.16-12
ii  lsb-base             10.2019051400

rsync recommends no packages.

Versions of packages rsync suggests:
ii  openssh-client  1:7.9p1-10+deb10u2
ii  openssh-server  1:7.9p1-10+deb10u2

-- no debconf information