Hello,
is it possible to filter the files I want to backup by physical size? Like excluding all files whose physical size is 0. This would be a workaround to solve the Dropbox smart sync issue. I’m still running on a very old version of duplicacy for this reason
Supporting backup of such on-demand files to begin with is dangerous: doing so makes behavior of your backup nondeterministic: Out of a bunch of files on your cloud storage only some of them are backed up and you don’t really know which ones. Restoring from such backup is most likely going to break multi-file projects and/or result in sync issues and other mess.
The same feature is implemented by OneDrive using special type of reparse point, that is easy for Duplicacy to skip, which is does (albeit as a side effect of not knowing what to do with that reparse point)
It seems that DropBox uses some other mechanism to implement files on demand, half-arsed at that, (likely using explorer extension and hence only working in explorer) since otherwise read by Duplicacy should have triggered file download.
In other words, files on demand with Dropbox should be considered broken (Based in the behavior you describe; I don’t use Dropbox and can’t confirm) and therefore to ensure your backups are useful either Dropbox should be configured for full sync or Dropbox local folder should be excluded from Duplicacy backup.
I realize I did not answer your question; but I believe you are trying to add crutches to workaround the issue instead of solving the root cause.