Copy a directory tree with exclusions

How to exclude some files/folders while copying a folder tree.

Tar

To start with, tar and pipes can be used to copy directly trees¹

tar cf - $src | tar xvf - -C $dst

A filter file .tarignore excludes stuff similar to .gitignore.²³

tar -c -X .tarignore -f - srcfolder | tar xvf - -C dstfolder

The syntax is similar to .gitignore:

.tarignore

.DS_Store
.git
.gitignore

rsync

Use --exclude flag in rsync to exclude certain folder(s). ⁴

rsync -av --progress sourcefolder /destinationfolder --exclude thefoldertoexclude --exclude anotherfoldertoexclude

Warning

The excluded directory paths are relative to the sourcefolder.

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1. https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix3/upt/ch10_13.htm ↩

2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39514510/exclude-directories-from-tar-archive-with-a-tarignore-file ↩

3. https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/exclude.html#index-exclude_002dignore ↩

4. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4585929/how-to-use-cp-command-to-exclude-a-specific-directory ↩

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