Dropbox is a useful development tool to sync in-progress work across computers independently of and in addition to traditional source control. An emergent problem is irrelevant files/folders syncing, wasting bandwidth and Dropbox storage. Such undesirable folders usually include project build artifacts and editor metadata. Dropbox provides the capability to use a filesystem-level attribute to ignore directories and files, but can only be applied retroactively after creation. Ideally, then, one would be able to define rules for automatically ignoring directories and files to prevent the race where Dropbox starts syncing the thing that should be ignored before the attribute can be applied.
Enter dropboxignored. Define a .dropboxignore file with the same syntax and (mostly) semantics as a .gitignore in the root of your Dropbox folder, start dropboxignored, and create new projects without worry of polluting your Dropbox.
cargo install dropboxignored
dropboxignored watch [OPTIONS] <PATH>
Options:
-f <IGNORE_FILE>
Where PATH is your dropbox directory (or a subdir). IGNORE_FILE defaults to a .dropboxignore file in the PATH directory if the -f switch isn't specified.
Usage: dropboxignored <COMMAND>
Commands:
ignore Ignore given file [aliases: i]
unignore Unignore given file [aliases: u]
check Check whether the given file is ignored [aliases: c]
watch Watch a given directory, ignoring and unignoring files as they're created and renamed [aliases: w]
help Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
Options:
-h, --help Print help
dropboxignored check <PATH>
dropboxignored ignore <PATH>
dropboxignored unignore <PATH>