How to exclude a specific folder on the destination when using rsync

file-copyrsync

consider the following example:

/source
  /source/folder1
  /source/folder2
  /source/folder3

/destination
  /destination/folder2
  /destination/folder3
    /destination/folder3/mytestfolder1
  /destination/folder4
    /destination/folder4/mytestfolder1
    /destination/folder4/mytestfolder2

I want to sync source to destination but "/destination/folder4/mytestfolder1" must be ignored.

I tried using the exclude parameter 

rsync -av --delete --progress --exclude "mytestfolder1" /source/ /destination/

but this ignores all folders named "mytestfolder1".

When I supplied the full path, nothing is ignored since it seems rsync thinks the path is in the source and not on the destination.

rsync -av --delete --progress --exclude "/destination/folder4/mytestfolder1" /source/ /destination/

rsync -av --delete --progress --exclude "destination/folder4/mytestfolder1" /source/ /destination/

I've searched the net but didn't find anything helpful.

Thanks for the help. 🙂

Best Answer

If you use an absolute path in a filter (include/exclude), it's interpreted starting from the root of the synchronization. You aren't excluding a directory in the source, or a excluding a directory in the destination, you're excluding a directory in the tree to synchronize.

Thus:

rsync -av --delete --progress --exclude "/folder4/mytestfolder1" /source/ /destination/
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