Borg: Feature Request: --ignore-dir

[caigner]

When extracting a file from the repo, the whole original directory structure is recreated.That is generally fine, but sometimes I just need one file from the archive and I want it to be placed in the current folder where I am right now.

Therefore I suggest adding the --ignore-dir switch to the borg extract optional arguments.

So:
user@local ~/test $ borg extract --ignore-dir /path/to/repo::first 'home/user/dir/subdir/subsubdir/my_important_file.txt'

should end up in
~/test/my_important_file.txt

and not in
~/test/home/user/dir/subdir/subsubdirmy_important_file.txt

[ThomasWaldmann]

Have a look at extract options, there is already --strip or so, which is just a more flexible version of what you suggest.

[caigner]

Not quite, if I understand the help text correctly.

I have to tell _--strip-components_ how many leading path elements I want removed. That is fine for one file or if all the files I want to extract reside in the same directory.

But if I want to extract '*.txt' from everywhere in the archive to the current directory, then this won't help, because then the number of leading path elements will vary from file to file.

What I suggest is an option to strip all and any leading path elements, no matter how many there are.

[enkore]

This should be fairly easy to implement with the current strip components code and some minor refactoring.

[ThomasWaldmann]

the use case where this would be useful (but --strip-components is not) sounds rather too special for me. it is only if you want to reorganize your files in a different way than they were when you backed them up and it is questionable whether this is the job of a backup software.

[caigner]

My use case scenario is as follows:

I run my own company, and for whatever reason, I just need to look at some old invoices from some years ago. They are in directories

/home/user/companystuff/1998
/home/user/companystuff/1999
/home/user/companystuff/2000
/home/user/companystuff/2001

In those directories are also other files, but I just need the invoice_xxxx.pdf files from each of these folders.

So, doing

borg extract --ignore-dir /mnt/backup/repo::2001 invoice*.pdf

should extract the files to the current direcory.

I wouldn't mind the name of the option if

borg extract --strip-components ALL /mnt/backup/repo::2001 invoice*.pdf
or
borg extract --strip-components all /mnt/backup/repo::2001 invoice*.pdf

would do the job.

[enkore]

If you want to do this right now, consider something like...

$ borg extract ... invoice*.pdf
$ mv **/*.pdf .
$ rm -r */

[ThomasWaldmann]

close?

[caigner]

I still believe a --ignore-dir option would be a good thing, but if you think that is too special then I can live with the solution which enkore offered.

[enkore]

^