Re: How to exclude Some but not All dot files?

[Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk>]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 10:40:14AM -0400, cyaiplexys wrote:
> I'm trying to make a gzipped tarball. I want to exclude only a certain 
> list of dot files but NOT ALL dot files (in other words tar the other 
> dot files not on the list).
>
> I have (this is just an example):
>
> tar -czf archive.tgz /home/me/dirToARchive/. 
> --exclude=/home/me/dirToARchive/.mysetuptemp 
> --exclude=/home/me/dirToARchive/.myotherdotfile 
> --exclude=/home/me/dirToARchive/.anotherdotfile
>
> In the directory I want to Include *all other* dot files not in the 
> --exclude above.
>
> I found it doesn't matter if I put the --excludes before the -czf or 
> after everything, I still end up with EVERY dot file in the directory 
> instead of ONLY the ones that are NOT on the list.
>
> I'm not great with tar, I admit.
>
> Is there a way to do what I'm proposing?

$ find /home/me/dirToARchive -print -depth | grep -v -x -f 
paths-to-exclude.txt | cpio -o -H ustar | gz > archive.tar.gz

cpio takes a list of filenames to archive on stdin, so we use find to 
list what we want, then filter that list through grep ("-f foo" says to 
get a list of filter expressions from file foo) before passing to cpio 
(which we've told to make a tar archive rather than its native format).

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