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Forum Discussion

jvasileff's avatar
jvasileff
Helpful | Level 6
7 years ago

Feedback on the new desktop app "ignore files" feature.

@Daphne that's great news! I look forward to trying it out. But it would also be nice to have a configuration file, like ".dropboxignore", to list paths or patterns to exclude. The reason is that e...
desktop
Setting up the apps
sync
digiwombat's avatar
digiwombat
Helpful | Level 6
6 years ago

At the risk of piling on, I feel it's important to add another voice to the list:

If this isn't a .ignore style file-based solution or, at the very least, a UI-based list of file/folder patterns (like every other solution currently in existence) it will be essentially useless.

The same is true if the files are still being indexed and processed but not uploaded. I have multiple tools where there's no trick to get the folders out of the hierarchy and they change often, leading to 20% CPU use spikes while Dropbox goes to work. It also locks files which causes automated copies to fail which leads to rebuilds and more of my life wasted.

I'm pausing syncing at this point which means I'm losing out on meaningful use of one of the core features I need, file versioning. If something happens, I don't want to lose a full day of progress.

Thanks for finally getting around to this feature, but I'm in agreement with everyone here that the file-attribute version is a non-solution.

  • digiwombat's avatar
    digiwombat
    Helpful | Level 6
    6 years ago

    XionicFire Thanks for the link, though it does still use the terrible folder attribute method they are currently testing, which doesn't work for deleted/remade files which are common for tons of things like Unity project folders, temp build folders for tons of workflows, removing and re-adding a node_modules folder and so on.

     

    It certainly makes re-upping those things easier for not-often-deleted folders though.

  • XionicFire's avatar
    XionicFire
    Collaborator | Level 9
    6 years ago
    Hmm you are correct but depending on your specific problem that issue can be addressed by the clever use of .ps1 powershell script files and windows scheduler
  • XionicFire's avatar
    XionicFire
    Collaborator | Level 9
    6 years ago
    To explain myself better, you can do a .ps1 powershell script that runs every 5 minutes or w/e using windows scheduler that searches and finds files matching your criteria in a specific folder recursively and then adds them automatically to the ignore list "almost" instantaneously, not the best solution but would do the job you want
  • ccd1's avatar
    ccd1
    Helpful | Level 6
    6 years ago

    Thank you so much XionicFire... saves me the hassle of migrating to a new service, for the time being... unbelievable that dropbox is so useless on this issue that we have to resort to user posted .reg changes.

  • XionicFire's avatar
    XionicFire
    Collaborator | Level 9
    6 years ago

    ccd1 , another user suggested a good change, ive updated the REG code to include it, it adds support for directories or files containing [ or ] characters, in case you want to update it to the new version, installing the update should be as simple as copying the new code and running the reg again.

     

    Im glad its useful to people, I know id be going mad and killing someone if I didnt have this and I had to manually type every file/folder I need to ignore with random generated names all over the drive on 172 machines.

  • koochy_rat's avatar
    koochy_rat
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

    For those using Unity, here is an editor script I made to automatically set the ignore attribute on startup:

    using System.Diagnostics;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

[InitializeOnLoad]
public class EditorStartup
{
    //to make sure Temp folder doesn't get synced to Dropbox. Make sure Temp is deleted on Dropbox online
    //Temp folder gets deleted by Unity so the extended attributes need to be set every time
    static EditorStartup()
    {
        //when recompiling scripts this will get called again. check to make sure we only do this on actual editor start
        if (EditorApplication.timeSinceStartup > 60) return;
        //UnityEngine.Debug.Log("Editor startup script");
#if UNITY_EDITOR
        if (Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.OSXEditor)
        {
            Process.Start("xattr", "-w com.dropbox.ignored 1 Temp");
            UnityEngine.Debug.Log("xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored 1 Temp");
        }
        else if (Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.WindowsEditor)
        {
            Process.Start("PowerShell", "Set-Content -Path Temp -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1");
            UnityEngine.Debug.Log("PowerShell Set-Content -Path Temp -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1");
        }
#endif
    }
}

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