In rsync, can I add exceptions to --delete using an external file?

Question

I want rsync to:

• Copy all files from source to destination
• If a file does not exist anymore in the source, delete it from the destination, EXCEPT for some specific files

And I need to list the exceptions in a separate file, like I can do with the --exclude-from option.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you can have a file list in exclude option but you can try this:

$ rsync -avz --exclude delete_file_1.php --exclude dir_1/file4.txt \
     directory_source/ directory_destination/

or you can:

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir_1/dir_2/file_3.php' source/ destination/

or you can:

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir*' <-- wildcard match here

If I were you I'd create test folders to be synced to remote destination and see how it works out. As long as you have the exclude option correct you can manipulate it to exclude plenty of files.

Answer 2

Apparently this is only possible if we run rsync 2 times, like this:

rsync -a source/ dest
rsync -a --exclude-from=files.txt --delete source/ dest

Where files.txt contains the files we don't want to delete.