Not fully understanding the include/exclude behaviour on --glob

[sjiep]

Can someone explain me the details of how include/exclude of the --glob argument works? The help (and documentation) mentions the following

Exclude options:
      --glob <GLOB>
          Glob pattern to exclude/include (can be specified multiple times)

And the examples in the documentation only highlight excludes.

As far as I understand, when only using excludes, via the !, all files/directories under the provided path will be included by default, for paths of files and directies that match the exclude glob they will be included.

I'm not sure how include would work, I'm assmuing by leaving out the !. In this case it will only include the files/directories that match the glob?

By search through the github issues, i've read thread where it appears you can also mix and match includes and excludes for more complex matching, but as I don't see any reference to the docs for this I can only guess how that should work

My use case:
I was thinking of making two different snapshots of my home directory,

1. one only containing the dot files/directories from the root of the home directory (recursively)
2. one containing the inverse of that (bascially normal files and directories from the root, recrusively, i.e. not the ones starting with a dot)

I made little sample setup:

Give my following source structure

/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot
├── .foo
│   └── bar
├── .test
├── animal
│   ├── .config // this is an empty directory
│   ├── .list
│   └── sheep
├── car
└── human
    └── brain

For 1 I would expect only to match

/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot
├── .foo
│   └── bar
├── .test

For 2 I would expect only to match

/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot
├── animal
│   ├── .config
│   ├── .list
│   └── sheep
├── car
└── human
    └── brain

For 2 (excluding dot files/directories) I can make it work with the following glob:

rustic -P dot ls /home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot --glob="!/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.*"

# Gives
[INFO] using config /home/sjiep/.config/rustic/dot.toml
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal/.config
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal/.list
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal/sheep
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/car
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/human
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/human/brain

I would assume for 1 by removing the ! it would only include the dotfiles however, it also seems to include directories not starting with a dot

rustic -P dot ls /home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot --glob="/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.*"

# Gives
[INFO] using config /home/sjiep/.config/rustic/dot.toml
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.foo
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.test
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal/.config
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/human

Perhaps my understanding of the include is wrong. When I for example run the following (which should only include the car file`), it seems to also match other things

rustic -P dot ls /home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot --glob="/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/car"

# Gives
[INFO] using config /home/sjiep/.config/rustic/dot.toml
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.foo
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/animal/.config
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/car
/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/human

For now I will just settle on a snapshot that includes both the dot files/directories and the normal ones. But I am curious on how the include/exclude mechanism is working.

[aawsome]

Hi @sjiep!

The include/exclude behavior currently depends on the ignore crate which is e.g. also used by ripgrep.
We however plan to rework this soon as it turns out that many people are facing problems with using this for their backup selections. This, however, will take a bit.

In meanwhile you can use rustic ls (with a local path) to test your globs and get the result very quickly...

[sjiep]

Thanks @aawsome!

I will take a look at the docs of the ignore crate

[sjiep]

Knowing that it uses the ignore create from rust, made using Claude quite helpful.

First of all it gave me this piece of information:

Exclude globs (!) are straightforward — match → skip the whole subtree.

Include globs (no !) don't mean "show only this" — they mean "only descend into paths that could lead to a match", which necessarily surfaces intermediate directories.

and

The mental model to keep in mind:

Prefer exclude globs (!) over include globs wherever possible — they behave more intuitively.
If you need include-only behaviour, express it as the negation (i.e., exclude what you don't want) rather than including what you do want.

So my case for "exclude dotfiles at root" was already working with this:

# Exclude all files/directories under the given path that start with a dot
--glob="!/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/.*"

My case I was struggling with (as I wasn't writing it as an exclude was) "only containing the dot files/directories from the root (recursively)" which can be achieved via an exclude like so:

# Exclude all files/directories under the given path that do not start with a dot
--glob="!/home/sjiep/Playground/backup/dot/[!.]*"