rsync already has a mechanism for reading exclude patterns from a file, using the --exclude-from option, but it would be useful to read them from a *default* file if --exclude-from is omitted. Something like .gitignore from git. It could work something like: 1. place .rsyncignore in SRC/ with a list of excluded files/folders 2. rsync -av SRC DEST (without the need to specify --exclude-from, it would automatically use .rsyncignore)
alias rsync=rsync --exclude-from=.rsyncignore
I also think this is better left to local customization. See the -F option that causes rsync to use this filter command: --filter=’dir-merge /.rsync-filter’ If you want that by default, either setup an alias, a wrapper shell script, or use a popt alias. For instance, you could make the -a option include -F by putting this in your ~/.popt (or /etc/popt) file: rsync alias -a -aF