syncthing-stignore - Prevent files from being synchronized to
other nodes
If some files should not be synchronized to (or from) other
devices, a file called .stignore can be created containing file
patterns to ignore. The .stignore file must be placed in the root of
the folder. The .stignore file itself will never be synced to other
devices, although it can #include files that are synchronized
between devices. All patterns are relative to the folder root. The contents
of the .stignore file must be UTF-8 encoded.
NOTE:
Note that ignored files can block removal of an otherwise
empty directory. See below for the (?d) prefix to allow deletion of ignored
files.
The .stignore file contains a list of file or path
patterns. The first pattern that matches will decide the fate of a
given file.
- Regular file names match themselves, i.e. the pattern foo matches
the files foo, subdir/foo as well as any directory named
foo. Spaces are treated as regular characters.
- Asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters in a filename,
but does not match the directory separator. te*ne matches
telephone, subdir/telephone but not tele/phone.
- Double asterisk (**) matches as above, but also directory
separators. te**ne matches telephone,
subdir/telephone and tele/sub/dir/phone.
- Question mark (?) matches a single character that is not the
directory separator. te??st matches tebest but not
teb/st or test.
- Square brackets ([]) denote a character range: [a-z]
matches any lower case character.
- Curly brackets ({}) denote a set of comma separated
alternatives: {banana,pineapple} matches either banana or
pineapple.
- Backslash (\) “escapes” a special character so
that it loses its special meaning. For example, \{banana\} matches
{banana} exactly and does not denote a set of alternatives as
above. Escaped characters are not supported on Windows.
- A pattern beginning with / matches in the root of the folder only.
/foo matches foo but not subdir/foo.
- A pattern beginning with #include results in loading patterns from
the named file. It is an error for a file to not exist or be included more
than once. Note that while this can be used to include patterns from a
file in a subdirectory, the patterns themselves are still relative to the
folder root. Example: #include more-patterns.txt.
- A pattern beginning with a ! prefix negates the pattern: matching
files are included (that is, not ignored). This can be used
to override more general patterns that follow.
- A pattern beginning with a (?i) prefix enables case-insensitive
pattern matching. (?i)test matches test, TEST and
tEsT. The (?i) prefix can be combined with other patterns,
for example the pattern (?i)!picture*.png indicates that
Picture1.PNG should be synchronized. On Mac OS and Windows,
patterns are always case-insensitive.
- A pattern beginning with a (?d) prefix enables removal of these
files if they are preventing directory deletion. This prefix should be
used by any OS generated files which you are happy to be removed.
- A line beginning with // is a comment and has no effect.
NOTE:
Prefixes can be specified in any order (e.g.
“(?d)(?i)”), but cannot be in a single pair of parentheses (not
“(?di)”).
NOTE:
Include patterns (that begin with
!) cause
Syncthing to traverse and watch the entire directory tree regardless of other
ignore patterns.
Top-level include patterns are treated as special cases and will
not force Syncthing to scan the entire directory tree. For example:
!/foo is a top-level include pattern, while !/foo/bar is
not.
Given a directory layout:
.DS_Store
foo
foofoo
bar/
baz
quux
quuz
bar2/
baz
frobble
My Pictures/
Img15.PNG
and an .stignore file with the contents:
(?d).DS_Store
!frobble
!quuz
foo
*2
qu*
(?i)my pictures
all files and directories called “foo”, ending in a
“2” or starting with “qu” will be ignored. The
end result becomes:
.DS_Store # ignored, will be deleted if gets in the way of parent directory removal
foo # ignored, matches "foo"
foofoo # synced, does not match "foo" but would match "foo*" or "*foo"
bar/ # synced
baz # synced
quux # ignored, matches "qu*"
quuz # synced, matches "qu*" but is excluded by the preceding "!quuz"
bar2/ # synced, despite matching "*2" due to child frobble
baz # ignored, due to parent being ignored
frobble # synced, due to "!frobble"
My Pictures/ # ignored, matched case insensitive "(?i)my pictures" pattern
Img15.PNG # ignored, due to parent being ignored
NOTE:
Please note that directory patterns ending with a slash
some/directory/ matches the content of the directory, but not the
directory itself. If you want the pattern to match the directory and its
content, make sure it does not have a / at the end of the
pattern.
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