Prevent Certain Files / Folders being Backed UP.

[StoneLegion]

Your GTNH Discord Username

StoneLegion

Feature Request

We have a decent filter system of what we can backup, That being said it be nice to have an exclusion list of files and folders not to backup. In my case the wonderful DH Mod: https://github.com/DarkShadow44/DistantHorizonsStandalone saves sql files into the data folder. This is something I would not want to backup, at least via this method and so I would like to exclude those said files.

@DarkShadow44

Final Checklist

• I have searched the issues and haven't found a similar issue.

[DarkShadow44]

I still plan to work on that, just currently on other topic!

[aidenfarley]

@DarkShadow44 Do you have any work on this yet? I was thinking about taking a crack at it.

[DarkShadow44]

I think I got it mostly figured out already. The implementation isn't too difficult, it's more the concept.

I'd reuse the same idea from additional_backup_files, with excluded having priority over included.

Some minor questions tho:

• What happens if you have a file in the backup that is marked as excluded in the current config? I'd still restore that.
• What happens to ignore files when restoring a backup? Are they moved away too or are they kept? I'd choose they get moved too.

Of course those issues disappear if we say exclude only works for files inside the world folder, but for completeness I'd make it work for everything.

With those assumptions in place, the only place where we need to check excludes is in ThreadBackup.doBackup, probably just removing all files that match the pattern after the call to addBaseFolderFiles. Similar to how we match the pattern for additional_backup_files.

What do you think? Or maybe you have a better idea?

[StoneLegion]

I was a bit confused when I read this, but I guess overall it's what happens if it's in both locations. If it's in Both Locations then you should always go the safest way and backup said file if it's in the includes no matter if excludes says otherwise.

For restoring, I can't say much to that does SU provide a automated restore system? Technically the Include/Exclude system should not touch the restore system at all and have no effect on that maybe say that via a comment line in the configs.

I used a mod for 1.21.1 with DH in fact called simple backups and this was their exclude config btw and my added changes for my own needs:

#WARNING Please check your configuration before using permanently.
#The backup system will ignore these paths and files.
[to_ignore]
	#All directories that should be excluded from backups
	#Format: Enter paths relative to the world directory (e.g., 'logs', 'data/cache')
	#All files within these directories will also be excluded
	ignored_paths = []
	#Specific files that should be excluded from backups
	#Format: Enter complete file paths relative to the world directory (e.g., 'level.dat_old', 'stats/player.json')
	#Use this for individual files rather than entire directories
	ignored_files = ['data/DistantHorizons.sqlite', 'data/DistantHorizons.sqlite-wal', 'data/DistantHorizons.sqlite-shm']
	#Regular expression pattern to exclude matching files from backups
	#All files with paths matching this pattern will be skipped
	#Example: '.*\.temp$' excludes all files ending with .temp
	#Leave empty to disable regex-based file exclusion
	ignored_files_regex = ""

[aidenfarley]

@StoneLegion, @DarkShadow44's response was more for me, as they were commenting on the technical aspect of implementing such a feature.

@DarkShadow44, I came to the same conclusions based on my own independent review of the code, and I agree with your opinions on how the exclusion should be handled.
Ideally, it would be nice to rewrite a good portion of that logic to make a little more sense, but it would be realistically easier to only change what would be needed for that feature.

[DarkShadow44]

@StoneLegion, @DarkShadow44's response was more for me, as they were commenting on the technical aspect of implementing such a feature.

Since they requested the feature I wanted to have their input as well :)

@DarkShadow44, I came to the same conclusions based on my own independent review of the code, and I agree with your opinions on how the exclusion should be handled. Ideally, it would be nice to rewrite a good portion of that logic to make a little more sense, but it would be realistically easier to only change what would be needed for that feature.

Do you want to handle the implementation and testing - I could review - or do you want to leave it to me?

[aidenfarley]

Do you want to handle the implementation and testing - I could review - or do you want to leave it to me?

I don't have a lot of free time right now to work on anything, but I will definitely pick it up this summer.

Whether or not you decide to end up doing it, I will probably end up working on it to get back into the swing of things. It's been years since I've worked on Java😀