Finally, I found a hint that the behavior of rsync described above may be a feature, not a bug:

The current code logs the same way for a --log-file as it does for a daemon log, which means that it does not log transfers that aren't really transfers.

[https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5792#c2]

In order to get a log-file in dry-run-mode that really contains all updates, creations and deletions, as a workaround you could redirect the screen output to a file, e. g. like

rsync -a --delete-delay --progress --itemize-changes --stats --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' --dry-run /tmp/mySource/ /tmp/myDest/ | tee /tmp/rsync-dry.txt 

In the example, I used the option --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' to format the output roughly the way it would have been formated by the --log-file option.

Finally, I found a hint that the behavior of rsync described above may be a feature, not a bug:

The current code logs the same way for a --log-file as it does for a daemon log, which means that it does not log transfers that aren't really transfers.

[https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5792#c2]

In order to get a log-file in dry-run-mode that really contains all updates, creations and deletions, as a workaround you could redirect the screen output to a file, e.g. like

rsync -a --delete-delay --progress --itemize-changes --stats --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' --dry-run /tmp/mySource/ /tmp/myDest/ | tee /tmp/rsync-dry.txt 

In the example, I used the option --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' to format the output roughly the way it would have been formatted by the --log-file option.

Finally, I found a hint that the behavior of rsync described above may be a feature, not a bug:

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5792 "The current code logs the same way for a --log-file as it does for a daemon log, which means that it does not log transfers that aren't really transfers."

In order to get a log-file in dry-run-mode that really contains all updates, creations and deletions, as a workaround you could redirect the screen output to a file, e. g. like

rsync -a --delete-delay --progress --itemize-changes --stats --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' --dry-run /tmp/mySource/ /tmp/myDest/ | tee /tmp/rsync-dry.txt 

In the example, I used the option --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' to format the output roughly the way it would have been formated by the --log-file option.

Finally, I found a hint that the behavior of rsync described above may be a feature, not a bug:

The current code logs the same way for a --log-file as it does for a daemon log, which means that it does not log transfers that aren't really transfers.

[https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5792#c2]

In order to get a log-file in dry-run-mode that really contains all updates, creations and deletions, as a workaround you could redirect the screen output to a file, e. g. like

rsync -a --delete-delay --progress --itemize-changes --stats --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' --dry-run /tmp/mySource/ /tmp/myDest/ | tee /tmp/rsync-dry.txt 

In the example, I used the option --out-format='%t %p %i %n %M %l' to format the output roughly the way it would have been formated by the --log-file option.