Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

[Tom_M]

Please please please can you add a feature that allows folders to be excluded from the Dropbox account (on windows and mac). For sure I'm not the first person to request this, but I'm yet to find a good explanation of why it's not there. A quick google search reveals loads of people also looking for the same feature. I really like the workflow I have with dropbox, but it's getting to the point where I might switch providers in order to allow better selective sync.

I've seen hackish solutions using selective sync, but it would be great if this could be done in one of the following ways:
- global pattern matching eg "node_modules"
- a marker file in the directory like .dropboxignore
- a simple right click context menu "Ignore this folder"

Other than that, keep up the good work. Cheers.
Tom

[Emma]

Hi folks, 

Thanks for your feedback on this.
While ignored files delivers for some of the use cases here, I appreciate it does not for all. 
We'll be taking another review of this thread to isolate use cases for a .dropboxignore file feature in particular.

I've updated the status and we'll take this to the product team.
As a side note, it would be helpful for us if you could outline the gap between what ignored files offers, and what a .dropboxignore file feature would add to your workflows.

Thank you.

[sijpkes]

The amount emotion around this feature astounds me. The product's name clearly describes its purpose 'DropBox'.  It's not DropVersion or VersionBox! DropBox's user base are generally people storing documents and photos etc. they are not developers.

If you want to unscrew a phillips head, don't complain that a monkey wrench won't do the job.

Use the right tool for the job.  And if you want it free use Git or Bitbucket. 

If you want DropBox for assetts then simply use  DropBox to sync the assets folder and register the source code as a git repo.  Really not so hard.

[jamak]

"Really not so hard" yes it is. "Use dropbox AND git/bitbucket" what a headache.

The whole point of dropbox is that it constantly syncs. SVN/git/hg et cetera all have to manually commit and sync. They are version control systems. If thats what people wanted thats what they'd use. The whole point of drop box is that it is not like that.

The whole point of dropbox over them is that on dropbox YOU DONT HAVE TO commit, it automatically syncs every change to the cloud instantly. YOU DONT HAVE TO log into the remote box and manually pull the latest changes, the drop box client automatically downloads them.

You have a dropbox with .html / .php / .js / .css files in it, you change them locally, you go to your web browser, you wait 1 or 2 seconds, you refresh the page, and your live website on the VPS / dedicated server is now showing the recent changes, because of drop box! How easy is that? How neat, great & convenient is that? Git / SVN / etc suck. You forget to commit and then go home and want to work on it some more and say "OH NO! I Forgot to commit! my latest changes are stuck on my laptop at work! p.o.s!" with dropbox it would have synced as soon as you hit save.

Advice of "dont use dropbox for that use git instead" is crap because if they are using dropbox in the first place its because only dropbox / syncthing / btsync et cetera will do, git / svn etc are not good enough!

So basically for languages that generate objects like c/c++/c# (.obj / .exe) and java (.class) you should look at cmake.

Your dropbox has:

DropBox/MyProject/Main.cc
DropBox/MyProject/ImageLoader.cc

DropBox/MyProject/logo.jpg

DropBox/MyProject/CMakeLists.txt

and then you run cmake gui

And you make it use the glob method to grab all files that exist.

And then you click choose source and browse to DropBox/MyProject

Then you click choose build dir and browse to c:\temp\asdasdasd

Then you hit configure, generate, open, and visual studio will open up a new project in c:\temp\asdasdasd where all object files and .exe will go but the source files are opened from DropBox\MyProject\ so changes are synced.

When you want to add a new source to the project, you go to DropBox\MyProject, right click, create new text file, name it, rename the extension to .cc / .h and then go to cmake and hit configure,generate, and then go to visual studio and click reload on the prompt. It will now have the new file in the project, and all your tabs and open files are still there and you can now rebuild.

And that way .pdb .obj .exe et cetera never end up in dropbox sync folder.

[sijpkes]

Ok, @jamak that's fine for small projects or when you're working by yourself.

But what happens when someone else wants to make changes to that code?

The way I'm talking about working is having the actual git repo in the Dropbox folder so you have the best of both worlds.  These tools are not a 'headache' unless you've never used version control.

I think dropbox is fine for individual projects but for anything at scale it's only good for sharing documents here and there, it is definitely not something you would use at scale.

[David H.41]

There are several ideas on this forum about allowing users to have full control over what files/folders are synced with Dropbox, which would be great. This is a simpler request. There is already a number of file types that are ignored by Dropbox (listed here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/files-not-syncing).

Files with the .lock extension should also be ignored. By definition there is no purpose in syncing files like these to dropbox.

https://fileinfo.com/extension/lock

What is a LOCK file?

File used by various operating systems and programs to lock a resource, such as a file or a device; typically contains no data and only exists as an empty marker file, but may also contain properties and settings for the lock.

[sem2nawara]

Some files/folders are either generated or transient by nature, and thus it should not be included in the sync in the first place. There should be an ability to right-click on a particular file/directory and click 'exclude' which lets Dropbox ignore it altogether. 

This feature is beneficial for programming people who put their source code in Dropbox, and as part of the code build, tons of generated files should not be synced in the first place. For example, people using Node.js use thousands of files under the node_module directory which adds the stress of Dropbox synching and it clutters the cloud version of the data. 

[bigjohnson]

 as well as .lck , to be honest, this all seems like a farce, we should be able to make our own exclusion lists, this is just a bandaid on the symptom of the problem. every program spits out their own file extension. it's almost impossible for me to work out of the folder, i find myself having to save everything as a new file, delete the old one, and rename the new one back to the original title, for every single file that gets locked. it's all quite silly that they wouldn't have such a simple feature when they already do this on thier own lists. who knows, maybe someone would like to keep some .tmp files while reallocating their files and want to keep it as a log. who's to say? that they choose FOR me, really activates my almonds.

[Steve S.86]

+1 but it appears Dropbox could not care less, certainly not enough to make any comment in this thread. Why bother having a suggestions section?

[jkwill87]

+1 Why is this not a thing?

[gibbsy]

Take to the airwaves: https://twitter.com/andrewgillon/status/968425779444011009

[Siorra]

i'm programmer too, i'd like store my projects in dropbox, but it's very complex with node_modules, that contain hundreds of thousands files