Exclude folders from backups on Windows - unclear how to achieve - example / documentation update suggested

[tomwaldnz]

I'm trying to exclude a subfolder and all its contents using Restic on Windows.

There's a lot of examples in bug 1005, but it's still not clear how to exclude folders specified as full path names. A few more examples in the documentation would be really helpful..

For example, say I'm backing up c:\documents\financials and I want to exclude all files in c:\documents\financials\temporary, how do I do that?

I've tried the command lines below and a few more variations, but the contents of temporary are still included in the backup.

Output of restic version

restic 0.9.1 compiled with go1.10.3 on windows/amd64

How did you run restic exactly?

restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='temporary' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --excludefile='temporary' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='c:\documents\financials\temporary' -r C:\repo backup
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='c:\documents\financials\temporary*' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='c:\documents\financials\temporary\*' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='c:\documents\financials\temporary' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='temporary' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials
restic_0.9.1_windows_amd64.exe --exclude='/C/documents/financials/temporary/' -r C:\repo backup c:\documents\financials

What backend/server/service did you use to store the repository?

Windows local file system

Expected behavior

Folder c:\documents\financials\temporary\ should be excluded from backup

Actual behavior

Folder contents are included in backup

Steps to reproduce the behavior

As above.

Do you have any idea what may have caused this?

N/A

Do you have an idea how to solve the issue?

Turns out the answer was RTFM.

Did restic help you or made you happy in any way?

It might if I can get it to work as desired :) Looks like a nice backup program, cross platform, mature and reliable, so I'm trying it out on my Linux and Windows systems.

[tomwaldnz]

I worked it out - it's a PEBKAC error. I didn't read the documentation properly and my command line was malformed. I had used

--exclude="c:\path\to\file"

when I needed to use

--exclude "c:\path\to\file"

Note the lack of an equals sign. Solved!

[ProactiveServices]

restic supports both a = and a space between the switch name and its value. Having just run a test using 0.9.1 it correctly excludes when using --exclude=pattern and --exclude pattern.
You may have been caught out by the fact restic is case-sensitive - something us Windows users often overlook.