I use a Time Machine server for my backups. Meanwhile I am developing lots of web applications where the project usually consist of a folder with the application files I want to backup and node_modules
folder (external libraries) I don't want to backup. In other words the folder structure e.g. is:
projects
-- app1
---- src
---- node_modules -- I want to ignore only this folder
---- package.json
-- app2
---- whatever-else
---- node_modules -- I want to ignore only this folder
---- package.json
---- elephant.jpg
etc.
The amount of applications is big and growing (currently more than 20), the size of node_modules
folder is usually thousands times bigger than the rest of the project: the size is huge and the amount of files too.
How to exclude all the node_modules
folders within the whole system (like .gitignore
but for time machine)? Is there some way to do it by mask? I simply don't want to add the folder to excluded folders manually all the time.
I am also fine with a cron script that searches for the new folders every N minutes and makes them to be ignored.
Are there solutions for that?
Best Answer
You can find and exclude all
node_modules
folders from the current path, e.g. in your home directory (~
), like this:Kudos to @peterdemartini: https://gist.github.com/peterdemartini/4c918635208943e7a042ff5ffa789fc1
Note that the excluded folders will not appear in the Time Machine System Preferences or when running this command: