The docs linked to filepath.Glob (which is used) but the syntax is described in the documentation of filepath.Match. So it makes sense to link that directly.
The godoc for filepath.Match has the syntax, which is what is important
for writing patterns. Use pkg.go.dev instead of golang.org/pkg.
For #4245. Not all links fixed yet.
The scanner process has only cosmetic effect for the progress printer,
and can be disabled without impacting functionality when the user does
not need an estimate of completion.
In many cases the scanner process can provide beneficial priming of
the file system cache, so as general advice it should not be disabled.
However, tests have shown that backup of NFS and fuse based filesystems,
where stat(2) is relatively expensive, can be significantly faster
without the scanner.
There is no need to use a special wildcard `**` to demonstrate negative
patterns. Actually, it is both slower than the simpler variant and seems
to confuse users.
This is quite similar to gitignore. If a pattern is suffixed by an
exclamation mark and match a file that was previously matched by a
regular pattern, the match is cancelled. Notably, this can be used
with `--exclude-file` to cancel the exclusion of some files.
Like for gitignore, once a directory is excluded, it is not possible
to include files inside the directory. For example, a user wanting to
only keep `*.c` in some directory should not use:
~/work
!~/work/*.c
But:
~/work/*
!~/work/*.c
I didn't write documentation or changelog entry. I would like to get
feedback if this is the right approach for excluding/including files
at will for backups. I use something like this as an exclude file to
backup my home:
$HOME/**/*
!$HOME/Documents
!$HOME/code
!$HOME/.emacs.d
!$HOME/games
# [...]
node_modules
*~
*.o
*.lo
*.pyc
# [...]
$HOME/code/linux/*
!$HOME/code/linux/.git
# [...]
There are some limitations for this change:
- Patterns are not mixed accross methods: patterns from file are
handled first and if a file is excluded with this method, it's not
possible to reinclude it with `--exclude !something`.
- Patterns starting with `!` are now interpreted as a negative
pattern. I don't think anyone was relying on that.
- The whole list of patterns is walked for each match. We may
optimize later by exiting early if we know no pattern is starting
with `!`.
Fix #233
