Change order of include / exclude

[kfiku]

Now we can't use somethink like this:

rsync src dest --include=*/ --include=*.js --exclude=* -av

to sync only *.js" files, becouse order is first exclude, include.

[jedrichards]

Sorry for delay, thanks for your input, but what if some users are relying on the current order? i.e. something like,

rsync src dest --exclude=*.foo --include=keep.foo  -av

to exclude all .foo but keep keep.foo? They would suddenly find their scripts broken if we made this change and they upgraded, right?

If you need different behaviour it might be better to just use the args option to get what you need?

[kfiku]

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/76237/rsync-certain-files-excluding-the-rest-ignoring-svn-directory-recursively here you have example what I meen.
This how works rsync command, is you want copy/sync you need first --include '*/' - to "wach all files" next specify extentions to copy/rsync --include='*.php' and next exclude all other extentions --exclude='*'

[jedrichards]

But the problem is if I reverse the order now it could likely break some people's scripts who were relying on exclude coming before include when they update with npm. You can achieve what you want right now with something like:

{
    src: "src",
    dest: "dest",
    args: ["--include=*/","--include=*.js","--exclude=*","-av"]
}

I agree it might have been better to have include come before exclude, but that's the way it is, and I don't want to change something fundamental now ...

[juriejan]

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the sample given before by @jedrichards does not work I'd expect it to. The following command excludes all *.foo files, but does not include keep.foo:

rsync src dest --exclude=*.foo --include=keep.foo -av

I order to keep keep.foo the order has to be swapped:

rsync src dest --include=keep.foo --exclude=*.foo -av

Am I missing something here?

[jedrichards]

You're right, if you want to exclude *.foo but keep keep.foo you have to have a command like:

rsync src dest --include=keep.foo --exclude=*.foo -av

But the problem is that rsyncwrapper by default builds its command with the --exclude options coming first (like in your example above that doesn't work as expected).

If you want rsyncwrapper to be build a command that works in this way you have to specify the includes/excludes explicitly in the args array to maintain the order. So an options object that looks like:

{
    src: "src",
    dest: "dest",
    args: ["--include=keep.foo","--exclude=*.foo","-av"]
}

I might change this in a future update ...

[juriejan]

I see now that I was also very narrowly minded assuming that the second scenario I mentioned was the most common one. I'll be using my own branch till a change is made.

I have an idea of an implementation that would allow people to mix includes and excludes which ever way they like. You could perhaps just have one single array that contains strings that correspond to the exclude/include file format. Here's an example:

{
    exclude: ['+keep.foo', '-*.foo']
}

Doesn't seem too solid to me, but due to the fact that rsync users might be familiar with it I think it could be acceptable. What do you think? I'd be happy to take a shot at implementing it.

[jedrichards]

Yeah, I was thinking it would be nice to try and have some concise syntax where people could easily define some complex exclude/include options and maintain whichever order was appropriate for their case.

At the moment having rsyncwrapper decide the order is not too good :S

If you fancy having a go at implementing it then please go ahead!

Perhaps we could name the option something like includeExclude to make it clear it does both things?

{
    includeExclude: ['+keep.foo', '-*.foo']
}

[juriejan]

That sounds good. I'll give it a shot.

On a side note: Can you give me an example of when it would be useful to have exclude before the include argument?

It seems to me that with using include before exclude allows you to pretty much do anything you'd like to, and that having it the other way around is essentially useless.

By default all files in the source are included, then you choose what to exclude, and then you override the exclude in certain places. It's not like you'd ever be indicating what you'd like to include and then what you'd like to exclude.

[jedrichards]

Humm. You might be right. I was naively assuming that since include before exclude was a valid pattern, then the opposite must be true too. But reading a bit more about it, and searching the web, it seems you're right - exclude before include would never really achieve anything.

So maybe the change should be to just put includes before excludes, bump the minor package version, mention it in the readme and leave it there?

Or do you think there's still value in combining them into one option?

[juriejan]

I'd say let's just swap them and carry on till someone else asks for the discussed functionality. I certainly won't be needing it soon.

[jedrichards]

OK that's in and published to 0.3.0. Thanks @juriejan. Also thanks @kfiku ... you were right all along, sorry :)

[kfiku]

no problem :) but i think wrote here is enough to work with it