rsync copy over only certain types of files using include option

Question

I use the following bash script to copy only files of certain extension in this case   sh   however it still copies over all the files   what s wrong    from  1 to  2  rsync -zarv  --include    sh   from  to

User · Answer

Wrote this handy function and put in my bash scripts or ~/.bash_aliases. Tested sync'ing locally on Linux with bash and awk installed. It works

selrsync(){
# selective rsync to sync only certain filetypes;
# based on: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11111793/588867
# Example: selrsync 'tsv,csv' ./source ./target --dry-run
types="$1"; shift; #accepts comma separated list of types. Must be the first argument.
includes=$(echo $types| awk  -F',' \
    'BEGIN{OFS=" ";}
    {
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++ ) { if (length($i) > 0) $i="--include=*."$i; } print
    }')
restargs="$@"

echo Command: rsync -avz --prune-empty-dirs --include="*/" $includes --exclude="*" "$restargs"
eval rsync -avz --prune-empty-dirs --include="*/" "$includes" --exclude="*" $restargs
}

Avantages:

short handy and extensible when one wants to add more arguments (i.e. --dry-run).

Example:

selrsync 'tsv,csv' ./source ./target --dry-run

User · Answer

The answer by  chepner will copy all the sub-directories irrespective of the fact if it contains the file or not  If you need to exclude the sub-directories that dont contain the file and still retain the directory structure  use  rsync -zarv  --prune-empty-dirs --include       --include    sh  --exclude       from    to

User · Answer

One more addition  if you need to sync files by its extensions in one dir only  without of recursion  you should use a construction like this   rsync -auzv --include      --include    ext  --exclude      source dir   destination dir    Pay your attention to the dot in the first --include  --no-r does not work in this construction   EDIT   Thanks to gbyte co for the valuable comment

User · Answer

Here s the important part from the man page      As the list of files directories to transfer is built  rsync checks each name to be transferred against the list of include exclude patterns in turn  and the first matching pattern is acted on  if it is an exclude pattern  then that file is skipped  if it is an include pattern then that  filename  is not skipped  if no matching pattern is found  then the filename is not skipped    To summarize    Not matching any pattern means a file will be copied  The algorithm quits once any pattern matches   Also  something ending with a slash is matching directories  like find -type d would    Let s pull apart this answer from above   rsync -zarv  --prune-empty-dirs --include       --include    sh  --exclude       from    to     Don t skip any directories Don t skip any  sh files Skip everything  Implicitly  don t skip anything  but the rule above prevents the default rule from ever happening     Finally  the --prune-empty-directories keeps the first rule from making empty directories all over the place

User · Answer

If someone looks for this    I wanted to rsync only specific files and folders and managed to do it with this command  rsync --include-from rsync-files  With rsync-files   my-dir  my-file txt  -

User · Answer

I think --include is used to include a subset of files that are otherwise excluded by --exclude  rather than including only those files  In other words  you have to think about include meaning don t exclude   Try instead   rsync -zarv  --include      --exclude     --include    sh    from    to    For rsync version 3 0 6 or higher  the order needs to be modified as follows  see comments    rsync -zarv --include      --include    sh  --exclude       from    to    Adding the -m flag will avoid creating empty directory structures in the destination  Tested in  version 3 1 2   So if we only want   sh files we have to exclude all files --exclude      include all directories --include      and include all   sh files --include    sh    You can find some good examples in the section Include Exclude Pattern Rules of the man page

[linux] rsync copy over only certain types of files using include option

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