Bash scripting and rsync: how to include just some folders and subfolders and what happends if I use ../ as path with --delete

Question

I have a bash script where I'm trying to copy some folders and archives in local with rsync. I have something like this:

RootFolder
  A
  B
  C 
  D
     D1
     D2
     D3
     .
     .
     .
     DN 
  E 
  F

What I want/do:

• Clean the Destiny Folder before start which I do with option --delete
• Exclude some type of archives which I do with option --exclude.
• Exclude some folders which I do with option --exclude.

So until here I will have a copy Folders A, B, D and E.

But now I need to copy Only some subfolders in D and the list will change according to a list.

So Imagine I want:

 A 
 B 
 D 
   D2 
   D4
   D8
 E 

I don't know how to do it as I've tried with --include but I'm doing something wrong.

I'm doing something like:

 rsync -av --delete --include=/D/D2 --include=/D/D4 --include=D8 --exclude=/C --exclude=/F RootFolder/ DestinyFolder

But It doesn't work well..... I've thought about doing some iterations or maybe I don't know if I could put all thee includes in a variable and pass it to rsync.

I have another doubt which is: As I get the destination Folder by param, what happens if the user uses "../" and I have the --delete option?? Will it delete the current folder? And if user just writes "/" will it delete everything?

Edit: Having:

RootFolder
  A
     File.txt
     .HidenFile
  B
  C 
  D
     D1
     D2
       File.txt
       .HidenFile
     D3
     .
     .
     .
     DN 
  E 
  F

I have something like

rsync -av --delete  --include=/D/D2 --include=/D/D4 --include=D8 --exclude=*.txt  --exclude=.* --exclude=/C --exclude=/F RootFolder/ DestinyFolder

Answer 1

The options for --include and --exclude are applied from left to right. The first options are always the strongest, so you can end a list with --exclude='*/' to stop any further processing of directories.

Once you use --exclude='*/' though, you will disable implicit processing of all files and directories, and you will need to state explicitly which files and folders to include.

• You want to include A, B, and E with all their files and folders,
• You want D and its files but not directories,
• You want D/D2, D/D4, /D/D8 and all their files and folders,
• Nothing else.

We can therefore construct the include/exclude statements like this

rsync --dry-run -av --delete

    --include '/A' --include '/A/**'
    --include '/B' --include '/B/**'
    --include '/E' --include '/E/**'

    --include '/D'

    --include '/D/D2' --include '/D/D2/**'
    --include '/D/D4' --include '/D/D4/**'
    --include '/D/D8' --include '/D/D8/**'

    -exclude '*/'

    src/ dst/

Since you are using bash, which is a shell that can handle arrays, you can build up the set of --include instructions safely. Here's an example:

# It's an array
includes=()

# Start with the fixed set of known directories
for known in A B E
do
    includes+=('--include' "/$known" '--include' "/$known/**")
done

# Special case
includes+=('--include' '/D')

# Now the changeable set of subdirectories. You might get this list elsewhere
for subdirs in D2 D4 D8
do
    includes+=('--include' "/D/$subdir" '--include' "/D/$subdir/**")
done

# Put it all together
rsync --dry-run -av "${includes[@]}" --exclude '*/' src/ dst/