[pbs-devel] [PATCH proxmox-backup 1/3] fix #4315: jobs: modify GroupFilter so include/exclude is tracked

[Thomas Lamprecht]

Am 07/11/2023 um 08:43 schrieb Wolfgang Bumiller:
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 05:45:11PM +0200, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
>> Easier to understand is *much* cleaner though, any admin that changes
>> a simple include/exclude filter manually, e.g., reversing the order,
>> has no idea that the end result is completely different.
> 
> I disagree that either of them is actually easier, and we already have
> order dependent include/exclude behavior in `.pxarexcludes` and on the

order is an extra dimension that users need to take care when writing
these, so by that alone it's easy to state that not having that is
simpler (naturally one can make it way worse by doing a bad UI, but well,
just don't do that).

And, we can always go for an order adhering model later

> CLI via `--exclude` when creating a backup with proxmox-backup-client.

Which is not really good UX, the "find" core util, and similar consorts,
are exactly deemed as hard to understand as that implicit order matters
is making it harder for users, especially those without a programming
background (i.e., the majority of our users).

> Also, `.gitignore` also works like this, you have exclude and includes
> in order, the last match wins.

Not sure if git should be used a pillar of good UX example, some would
even say that doing the opposite might be warranted in that case ;-P

> This makes it much easier to say things like "exclude 1-100 except 50",

Not really, you just use "include 50" and if the remaining set is bigger
do "exclude 1-49; exclude 51-100;" and especially in bigger examples this
is easier to reason about for the standard users.

> which, to me, seems like the most complex case you would want anyway?
> 
> Which you find easier probably depends on what you see more often, but
> for consistency's sake it may make more sense to stick to what we
> already have?

pxarexclude has nothing to do with this though? Would not mix walking
a file-system with filtering backup groups, two very different things.