I really like the “.gitignore” style of excludes that git uses, and implemented a quick version in my bash script for restic. Let me know if there are any ways to improve this! Or if this general idea is worth implementing in restic itself.
Essentially you can add “.restic_ignore” files anywhere within your backup directory. The script will find those and compile a list of all the patterns within them into a temporary file, and include that as an ‘exclude-file’ option in the restic command.
Enjoy!
-Z