Until a few years ago I had sync configured across several PCs with Dropgox, but a change for the worse in Dropbox put a limit on the number of devices, so these days I use Resilio Sync to keep my PCs in sync.
Lately I have been using node-based tools such as React and Git frequently, and if I keep those working directories inside a Resilio Sync folder, an enormous number of files get synced.
In particular, I do not want the contents of node_modules produced by node builds, or the git management folder, to be synced, so - late in the day though it is - I began to wonder whether Resilio Sync has an exclusion setting.
Looking into it, it seems you cannot configure exclusions from the GUI settings screen, but you can from the CUI.
Ignoring files in Sync (Ignore List) – Sync
How to configure exclusions in Resilio Sync
A .sync folder is created at the top of the tree of a folder you have already set up for syncing, and it seems you just have to edit the file called IgnoreList inside it.
Here I will exclude node_modules and the .git folder in a sync folder named Sync.
(I am appending to the entries that are configured by default)
This is how you write it on Mac/Linux.
$ cat << EOF >> Sync/.sync/IgnoreList
node_modules
.git
EOFAfter saving, it seems to take effect without a restart as long as ResilioSync is running.
This setting ignores every node_module and .git folder inside the Sync folder.
It looks like only the single-character ? and the wildcard * can be used, and regular expressions are not supported.
With this, node_modules generated by node builds inside the sync folder is no longer synced, and even if I put a Git repository there, only the work tree gets synced.
(Probably, if it is a repository that only I use, there is not much need to ignore the .git folder either…)
If there are other unnecessary files or folders being synced, I would like to keep adding them.