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Forum Discussion
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...
Ok so ive found a workaround... its not .. fun... and i do not recomend it unless you exactly know what you are doing and its going to cause all sorts of problems and in general its a bad idea, but it does the job, sort of.
Its based on this:
https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/154423-block-applcation-access-folder.html
Essentially you have to edit dropboxes windows execution permissions so it runs on its own user, a user which has only access to read/write its own EXE folders, some windows folders and the dropbox storage folder, once thats done you set them to ignore then block access to the folders you do not want to sync.
Dropbox now throws all sorts of errors but it "works" it now properly ignores that folder because it cannot read it due to permissions, however you on your computer can work normally on it.
Definitely not the kind of solution i expected but at least its working.
The provided solution with com.dropbox.ignored flags are not without issues.
1. On computer A, I build an app and it creates node_modules. That folder gets synced to my other computers.
2. I ignore the folder on computer A, and the folder gets deleted from the other computers.
3. Now I do a build on computer B. That creates node_modules on computer B, and now that folder now gets synchronized to my other computers. But that results in the existing folder on computer A is being renamed "node_modules (Ignored in conflict)".
4. I can now ignore node_modules on computer B and the folder disappears on my other computers.
5. I now have to rename the folder on computer A back to node_modules.
If Dropbox had listened to its customers and just created a git style .ignorefolders kind of file, everything would have been much easier. And lets face it. This is mostly an option for computer professionals anyway.
We really need some way to ignore folders/files based on path that is stored in place like dbignore file or something similar.
It's needed because there are many cases when user or some app need delete and/or recreate these folders/files.
At this moment 'ignore' function works only until the folder is deleted and created again.
I'm not here to say anything new, just to turn up the volume a little on previous comments:
I would also like the ability to ignore all current and future node_modules folders by pattern in a .dropboxignore file à la .gitignore. Just adding the com.dropbox.ignored attribute to node_modules folders in a dozen projects cut my file count by about 100,000. Also, folders like node_modules and build folders tend to be created and deleted often, so we're wasting a lot of system resources to sync something we don't even want synced.Here is how MEGAsync handles this, which is literally perfect.
Maybe those that use pCloud and other services can share those screenshots to help Dropbox figure how to implement this feature that other services have supported for quite awhile.
