These software have option to config directory using .ignore file

1. Kopia - .kopiaignore
2. Restic (hard to use)

• --exclude-file
• Ignore File: create a custom text file e.g., excludes.txt
• .exclude_me supports --exclude-if-present, which lets you skip any directory containing a specific file, such as .exclude_me.
• Uses gitignore-style syntax
• wrapper like Restatic - crawls directories before Restic starts and looks for .restaticignore files. It merges all those local files into one big exclude list and passes it to Restic automatically.

3. Duplicacy .duplicacy

https://github.com/gilbertchen/duplicacy/wiki/set

• ~While the official binary uses .duplicacy/filters, many users use scripts to generate that filter file by scanning for .cvsignore or custom ignore files in subdirectories.~

• ~https://forum.duplicacy.com/t/filters-include-exclude-patterns/1089/23~

• ~https://github.com/TheBestPessimist/duplicacy-utils~

• ~https://github.com/markfeit/duplicacy-scripts~

• ~https://github.com/gilbertchen/duplicacy/issues/337~

• ~https://forum.duplicacy.com/tag/filters~

~~Rclone~~ ~~(Only ignores no option to config)~~

1. --exclude-if-present .rcloneignore (any name)
2. Global --exclude-from list.txt

Why is it only recommended for "Large-scale cloud copies" and "Google Drive/Dropbox/S3"?

~~Borg~~ ~~(Only ignores no option to config) .borgignore~~

~~FreeFileSync~~ ~~(Maybe global only).ffs_gui or .ffs_batch~~

How to set up like this with features -

1. Forever full backups/DeDuplication - Option Delete changes older than x. Where full-backup is taken once then incremental-s are merged. I have heard terms like, snapshot and CBT but don't understand it.
2. Save a "Ghost" for excluded data ie only Filename, Metadata and Folder-Structure.
3. "File Change Tracker" to see summary of what files are moved/deleted/renamed between 2 backups. Like Kopia's https://kopia.io/docs/reference/command-line/common/diff/
4. "File History" where I see previous version of files on the main disk. Like Kopia's kopia snapshot list <filename>

To Backup

• External and Internal Disk (files) to backup,
• all separately backup-ed to the same backup disk, .

~~Old Post:~~ ~~https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1rzmg67/discussion/_backup/_solution/_comparison/~~

Duplicacy has a -nobackup-file