dropbox_ignore_service

Dropbox Ignore Service

Dropbox Ignore Service is tool to exclude files or folders from syncing to dropbox. The files get specified via the .dropboxignore file located in the root of a dropbox folder.

It watches for file/folder changes and notifies the user when a file/folder gets ignored via system notification.

It also offers a GUI:

• list all currently ignored files/folders
• list ignored files that are not in the .dropboxignore file specified => button to unignore them
• List .dropboxignore files
• Logs
• Settings: Enable autostart with the operation system

Cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, and macOS)

Motivation

The primary motivation behind developing this tool was to automatically exclude the node_modules folder after it gets created. While there are similar projects, most of them lack a GUI.

How it works

Dropbox does not offer a functionality to exclude files from syncing automatically yet. But what is does, is checking a file/folder for a ignore flag which this program sets. The dropbox has an article about that: https://help.dropbox.com/sync/ignored-files .

.dropboxignore example

The .dropboxignore tries to be .gitignore compliant.

The only difference is that negations (lines that start with a !) are not allowed.

Here is an example of a valid .dropboxignore file:

# ignore the node_modules folder located inside any directory
node_modules

# lines containing a slash are relative to the ignore file location
my_project/.git
/my_project/.git
/my_folder

# ignore my_project/.git located in any directory
**/my_project/.git

# matches the path "#folder"
\#folder
# matches the path "!folder"
\!folder

Installation

You can download the application from the releases section, it is a portable single file executable:

https://github.com/anton15x/dropbox_ignore_service/releases

Building form source

Requirements:

• go >= 1.21.0
• gcc
• Fyne dependencies:
  • windows: No additional dependencies required.
  • linux (ubuntu): Install xorg-dev using the command: sudo apt-get install -y xorg-dev
  • macOS: Install XQuartz using Homebrew: brew install --cask xquartz
  • other: see official documentation: https://docs.fyne.io/started/

go mod download
go generate ./...
go install fyne.io/fyne/v2/cmd/fyne@latest
fyne package

Flags

• log
  • The log file location (default: no file logging)
• f
  • the path to the dropbox root folder, may be specified multiple times (skips reading dropbox config file)
• hide-gui
  • If true, the GUI will not get shown at start (used at autostart with the operation system)
• t
  • A try run (does only prints the files, that would get ignored)

Resources:

dropbox documentation about ignoring files: https://help.dropbox.com/sync/ignored-files https://help.dropbox.com/de-de/sync/extended-attributes

dropbox documentation about finding pragmatically the dropbox folder(s): https://help.dropbox.com/de-de/installs/locate-dropbox-folder

used libraries:

• rjeczalik/notify filesystem change event listener used for windows (recursive watch)
• fsnotify/fsnotify filesystem change event listener used for all other platforms (no recursive watch, own implementation, that watches every subfolder separately)
• pkg/xattr read extended file attribute for linux/darwin.
• fyne.io/fyne Cross platform GUI toolkit in Go inspired by Material Design
• spiretechnology/go-autostart for setting the executable to autostart with the system
• bmatcuk/doublestar Path pattern matching and globbing supporting doublestar (**) patterns.
• stretchr/testify testing of course