AW: [rdiff-backup-users] Re: What happens if you add a --exclude to an existing rdiff-backup?

[D. Kriesel]

> It would be good if there was a way of removing a subset of data from
> the entire repository. So let's say I put a 500GB folder in /home by
> accident and it has gone into the repository and is bloating it. I can
> exclude it from my future rdiff-backup runs but the folder will still be
> held as snapshot[s]. If I run --remove-older-than it will remove all
> data older than whenever, but I want to keep all the other stuff and
> just remove this folder (and its contents).

RIGHT! This is the ONE feature I miss about rdiff-backup and which is my 
largest concern about it. I'll try to put it in a formalized way: 
"I want to be able to remove an entire subtree of an rdiff-backup repository 
_and every single trace of it in the metadata_".

This is not possible right now, as far as I know. If this was possible, it 
would just be great.

In my opinion, one would just have to remove 
   * any diffs, snapshots, increment, dir and missing markers and similar files 
of the subtree (easy because you just would have to delete a subtree within the 
metadata plus some few additional files)
   * any trace of any file within the subtree to delete in the zipped backup 
table of content files.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. If anyone wants to implement this feature, It 
will gladly be my shout for a sixpack :-)

David