Exclude sub directories recursively from folder

Question

I have some sub-folders in this path app/static/uploads/

I am expecting that --exclude="uploads" will do the job of ignoring everything in sub-folders. However I am still getting things like app/static/uploads/companies/headers/photo.jpg synced. Any idea how to ignore the sync of everything in the uploads folder?

switches: -vzr  --exclude="uploads" --exclude=".git" --exclude=".github" --exclude=".gitattributes" --exclude=".gitignore"

Answer 1

Your exclude pattern is not regex compliant for your intent.

You would need to do something like the following:

EXCL_DIRS="--exclude='*/uploads/*'"
EXCL_SUFS="--exclude='.git' --exclude='.github' --exclude='.gitattributes' --exclude='.gitignore'"

rsync --recursive --compress --verbose ${EXCL_DIRS} ${EXCL_SUFS}

If all the EXCL_SUFS specifications are to address files under your EXCL_DIRS, then you don't need to define EXCL_SUFS.

It is advisable to use the --dry-run option until you are sure that your command structure will perform as desired (as visually verified by examining the file list reported by rsync).