Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Razvan Boxifier 

Here’s some thoughts.

The whole file/folder pattern based approach has merit, but in my opinion, I see some tradeoffs with this approach. The main issue I see, is that you’d be giving up the ability to actually have a folder named “node_modules”, that actually can be synced.

You should be able to have a folder named “node_modules”, have it be located anywhere within your projects or anywhere in Dropbox, have it be for actual real node modules, or have it be just some random folder, that happens to be named node_modules, even if, as bad of an idea that it is, you should be able to do this. You should be able to selectively decide what gets synced and what stays local only.

My idea, essentially, is just an enhancement to the mechanisms that we’re already working with, ie. the ADS.

Here’s my idea, at least for Windows:

• Any file/folder, anywhere, can be set to be local-only via a right click action. We’re simply giving a GUI experience for running the ADS on the file/folder.
  
• Upon setting the ADS on a file/folder, we update the file/folders icon in File Explorer.

And that’s it.

It’s worth mentioning also, as it is right now via ADS, if a file/folder is local-only, if it’s deleted, then recreated, it does NOT automatically get set as local only. This makes sense. (Highlighting how this would be different with pattern based rules.)

Also, here’s a few things I recently stumbled upon, that might help or spark ideas from the community:

• From what I understand, I think this is an approach to setting your node_modules to a location outside of your project, ie. a global place:
  https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npm-prefix
• Here’s a client to see ADS’s (Update: I'm actually not sure what this streams thing is. Couldn't get it to work on Windows 11. Don't think it was what I thought it was.)
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/streams

And last, if you or anyone is interested in collaborating on the development of this, here’s a repo I just made on Github. Connect with me if you wanted to contribute.

https://github.com/justfront-end/DB-Local-Only