Cannot get rsync exclude option to exclude dir
Having an issues with rsync. I'm using rsync as a glorified cp command. I have in a script the following code.
rsync -aL --exclude /path/to/exclude/ --exclude='.*' /source/ /destination
I can get the rsync to exclude any hidden files. Hence the '.*' I cannot get the exclude dir to exclude. I've tried using an '=' sign, surrounding the dir with double quotes, with single quotes. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Answer
Actually, neither Erik's nor Antoni's answers are fully accurate.
Erik is halfway right in saying that
As test/a is the base directory synced from, the exclude pattern is specified by starting with a/
It is true that the exclude pattern's root is test/a (i.e. the pattern /some/path binds to test/a/some/path), but that's not the whole story.
From the man page:
if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in regular expressions. Thus "/foo" would match a file named "foo" at either the "root of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-file's directory (for a per-directory rule).
We can ignore the per-directory bit as it doesn't apply to us here.
Therefore, rsync -nvraL test/a test/dest --exclude=a/b/c/d will most definitely exclude test/a/b/c/d (and children), but it'll also exclude test/a/other/place/a/b/c/d.
rsync -nvraL test/a test/dest --exclude=/b/c/d, on the other hand, will exclude only test/a/b/c/d (and children) (test/a being the point to which / is anchored).
This is why you still need the anchoring inital slash if you want to exclude that specific path from being backed up. This might seem like a minor detail, and it will be so the more specific your exclude pattern becomes (e.g. Pictures vs. home/daniel/Pictures) but it might just come around to bite you in the butt.