You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Status:
Investigating
Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync
Please please please can you add a feature that allows folders to be excluded from the Dropbox account (on windows and mac). For sure I'm not the first person to request this, but I'm yet to find a g...
I will grant you that right clicking and telling Dropbox to not sync a folder works fine for most users and most cases.
My problem, and seemingly the problem that others are facing, is that if you have to do this for EVERY instance where you don't want material to be copied. There is no way to say don't ever sync a "build" folder, or a "temp" folder, or a ".git" folder, or a "my_secret_stash_of_pron" folder. You must first create the folder and then tell Dropbox to ignore it.
When I create a new project in Visual Studio Code, I want most of it backed up! I want Dropbox to actively record my changes to my source, libraries, and configurations. I want Dropbox to help serve as an immediate backup between saves. I want Dropbox to make it so that I can pick up an active project from another machine. These are all great things!
But every project that I start or do work on, I have to remember to go in and exclude certain folders every time. If I forget, I will inevitably run into problems when Dropbox has a (very brief) lock on a file and thus ACTIVELY INTERFERES with the build process where dozens/hundreds of temporary files are created and destroyed. I will get inevitably get an error message that XYZ files cannot be removed or is locked by another process. The same with Git, when I'm moving between branches or committing changes, Dropbox will try to sync all the tiny changes that happen to hundreds/thousands of tiny files in the object .git/objects directory.
I cannot fathom how the Dropbox developers themselves don't understand this need?!
I just want to be able to configure a single file, or even go in and set a preference that is able to use wildcard characters:
C/Users/imsolazy/Dropbox/**/.git
C/Users/imsolazy/Dropbox/**/.build
C/Users/imsolazy/Dropbox/Project/*/.vscode
C/Users/imsolazy/Dropbox/Project/*/tmp
C/Users/imsolazy/Dropbox/Project/*/vendorThis way when I create a new project, I'm confident that Dropbox is backing up my important stuff but isn't causing undue problems.
Respectfully submitted to the void,
-- Jeff Sorensen