Filter rules

[azfuller]

I love FFS. Very easy to use. However, I am very frustrated by the filter rules.

I am excluding /.config/
I am including /.config/chromixium/

It seems FFS is applying the less specific exclude rule to the more specific include?

My .config directory has many subdirectories. It is not feasible to enumerate each one. Am I mistakenly trying to use FFS for backup of personal data?

Also, the exclude examples show something like *test* which implies to me that /.*/ should exclude only hidden directories at the root directory. However, it behaves as if I said */.*/ because it excludes hidden directrories at any level.

If this is how it's supposed to work, are there any plans to make the filters more robust? I'd like ranges, like [a-z] too.

[Zenju]

> I am excluding /.config/
> I am including /.config/chromixium/

Include and Exclude filter rules are AND-related. So the way to overwrite an exclude rule is to use a second folder pair.


> /.*/ should exclude only hidden directories at the root directory.

This works correctly in my tests and only excludes hidden directories at synchronization base directories, but not at deeper levels.

[Zenju]

> It seems FFS is applying the less specific exclude rule to the more specific include?

Maybe "have a more specific rule overwrite a less specific one" could be made a new feature for the filter rules... provided it doesn't unintentially break other functionality.

[azfuller]

> I am excluding /.config/
> I am including /.config/chromixium/

Include and Exclude filter rules are AND-related. So the way to overwrite an exclude rule is to use a second folder pair.


> /.*/ should exclude only hidden directories at the root directory.

This works correctly in my tests and only excludes hidden directories at synchronization base directories, but not at deeper levels.

> > /.*/ should exclude only hidden directories at the root directory.

> This works correctly in my tests and only excludes hidden directories at synchronization base directories, but not at deeper levels.

You're right. I just tried it again. I must have confused myself last night.

I solved my include/exclude problem using Chromium's command-line option: "--user-data-dir=/home/USERNAME/Chromium" to put the user data (bookmarks, etc.) in its own directory. (I erroneously called it Chromixum in my first post.).

There probably aren't many people who would benefit from specificity of filter rules. But, it's one of those things that, when you need it, it feels like it would be intuitive for it to work that way.

I imagine implementing it now might cause a problem for existing rules. Maybe it would be possible to write a bit of logic that would examine include/exclude when a job is run and warn the user if they have rules written in a way that will be applied differently.

Probably a lot of work for what may be a tiny number of people who would exclude a large group, then include only select items.

Thanks