UI control to enable exclusion by extended attribute

Feature
#1

We need UI control to enable excluding stuff by extended attribute or make that a default in Duplicacy CLI.

This will enable a simple path to using Duplicacy GUI for users who don’t want to bother figuring out exclusion filters syntax: install app, configure storage, configure repo in home folder, set schedule, done. (That actually shall be a wizard that runs on a first invocation to be completely honest)

Lacking this I find it hard to recommend Duplicacy UI to most users seeking simple solution since without filtering a lot of trash will get picked up and the filtering configuration is broken in web UI today for all practical purposes. I really don’t want to send them to Arq for host of other issues but at least the onboarding experience on Arq is great and out of box configuration is sane.

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#2

I’m working on a new web GUI release, so how about making that the default in the new version? I’m a little concerned about this change of behavior. That is, if a user finds out that some files are no longer being backed up – are there any non-trivial files that might have this attribute on?

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#3

I doubt that. This attribute is exclusively used to proactively and explicitly mark data that should not be backed up.

The oppose is true; there are still a bunch of files that should not be backed up (such as browser caches) that are lacking that attribute; but if the app developer (who know best what data is not necessary to preserve) went extra mile to go and add that attribute they are strongly sure that data not only can but likely should be skipped — such as cloud index, derivative data, spotlight cache, other instance specific stuff, etc.

I look at it not as change in behavior. But rather — it was broken before (ignoring the explicit attribute is wrong behavior) but now it is fixed. It’s not a new feature. It’s a long overdue bug fix.

That said, I’m sure this will still break some people’s workflows but we have to live with that :slight_smile:

The checkbox on the filters page to skip that sort of data that is checked by default would be great too (however I can’t think of who would want to uncheck it).

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