Shell command to tar directory excluding certain files/folders

Question

Is there a simple shell command/script that supports excluding certain files/folders from being archived?

I have a directory that need to be archived with a sub dire

Answer 1

This exclude pattern handles filename suffix like png or mp3 as well as directory names like .git and node_modules

tar --exclude={*.png,*.mp3,*.wav,.git,node_modules} -Jcf ${target_tarball}  ${source_dirname}

Answer 2

tar -cvzf destination_folder source_folder -X /home/folder/excludes.txt

-X indicates a file which contains a list of filenames which must be excluded from the backup. For Instance, you can specify *~ in this file to not include any filenames ending with ~ in the backup.

Answer 3

Possible redundant answer but since I found it useful, here it is:

While a FreeBSD root (i.e. using csh) I wanted to copy my whole root filesystem to /mnt but without /usr and (obviously) /mnt. This is what worked (I am at /):

tar --exclude ./usr --exclude ./mnt --create --file - . (cd /mnt && tar xvd -)

My whole point is that it was necessary (by putting the ./) to specify to tar that the excluded directories where part of the greater directory being copied.

My €0.02

Answer 4

I found this somewhere else so I won't take credit, but it worked better than any of the solutions above for my mac specific issues (even though this is closed):

tar zc --exclude __MACOSX --exclude .DS_Store -f <archive> <source(s)>

Answer 5

For Mac OSX I had to do

tar -zcv --exclude='folder' -f theOutputTarFile.tar folderToTar

Note the -f after the --exclude=

Answer 6

You can use standard "ant notation" to exclude directories relative.
This works for me and excludes any .git or node_module directories:

tar -cvf myFile.tar --exclude=**/.git/* --exclude=**/node_modules/*  -T /data/txt/myInputFile.txt 2> /data/txt/myTarLogFile.txt

myInputFile.txt contains:

/dev2/java
/dev2/javascript