Stats reports zero deleted files

[m4rc0d1]

I'm using rsync to replicate a local directory tree to a remote rsync server using the native rsync protocol. Everything is working as expected, files are copied, modified, and deleted so that that remote tree is a true replica of the source. My only issue is with the final --stats report that always gives a "Number of deleted files: 0" regardless of the actual number of the deleted files on the target. I've tried various delete options with and without the --no-inc-recursive flag.

I have searched several places, but I can't get a rationale for this behavior and I don't understand if it is expected or a bug.

This is the command I use (-v and --itemize-changes are used as debug helper and not part of my standard command line):

rsync -aAXxW --delete-during -v --itemize-changes --stats --numeric-ids --no-inc-recursive /mnt/safe/ rem@10.10.10.10::put/safe > transfer.txt

And this is the result:

grep -c "\*deleting" transfer.txt
59

tail -n 17 transfer.txt

Number of files: 925,754 (reg: 848,610, dir: 77,126, link: 18)
Number of created files: 170 (reg: 135, dir: 35)
Number of deleted files: 0
Number of regular files transferred: 395
Total file size: 1,012,247,263,711 bytes
Total transferred file size: 362,236,852 bytes
Literal data: 362,236,852 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 64,780,726
File list generation time: 32.464 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 427,152,062
Total bytes received: 34,592

sent 427,152,062 bytes  received 34,592 bytes  434,353.49 bytes/sec
total size is 1,012,247,263,711  speedup is 2,369.57

Version of the source:

rsync --version
rsync  version 3.2.7  protocol version 32

Version of the target server:

rsync --version
rsync  version 3.4.1  protocol version 32