[Vegenoid]

AFAICT Backblaze does back up .git directories. I have many repos backed up. The .git directory is hidden by default in the web UI (along with all other hidden files), but there is an option to show them.

You should try downloading one of your backed up git repos to see if it actually does contain the full history, I just checked several and everything looks good.

[andybak]

I commented on this topic elsewhere on this page. This is an email from 2021. Maybe they changed policy but here:

> Bob (Backblaze Help)

> Aug 5, 2021, 11:33 PDT

> Hello there,

> Thank you for taking the time to write in,

> Unfortunately .git directories are excluded by Backblaze by default. File

> changes within .git directories occur far too often and over so many files

> that the Backblaze software simply would not be able to keep up. It's beyond

> the scope of our application.

> The Personal Backup Plan is a consumer grade backup product. Unfortunately we

> will not be able to meet your needs in this regard.

> Let me know if you have any other questions.

> Regards,

> Bob The Backblaze Team

[layer8]

> changes within .git directories occur far too often and over so many files that the Backblaze software simply would not be able to keep up.

I don’t really understand that. I’m using Windows File History, and while it’s limited to backing up changes only every 15 minutes, and is writing to a local network drive, it doesn’t seem to have any trouble with .git directories.

[Tor3]

>File changes within .git directories occur far too often[..]

That's a crazy statement. The cloud backup system I use can be configured to how often it should bother even looking for new files, and for the section where I have my .git repos (they're actually "bare" git repos and I push to them, locally) I've set it to every two hours. Which is actually overkill because they absolutely do not change that quickly.

[foobiekr]

This is idiotic. All they have to do is schedule them and then introduce enough hysteresis to not constantly churn on their end. Even if they backed up at most once a day this would be better than this idiocy.

[Ajedi32]

I'd be really curious to know why that's working for you and not me. I just tried restoring and none of my .git directories were included; just the working copy. I tried with both the web and desktop restore tool.

There's no mention of .git being excluded in the Settings or on their support page (https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/supported-bac...); they just silently decided to not back up a bunch of my files without telling me... wonderful.

[Vegenoid]

Unfortunately I do not know, I haven’t done anything to configure this as far as I am aware. I am on macOS.

[Ajedi32]

Deleting C:\Programdata\Backblaze\bzdata\bzexcluderules_mandatory.xml resolve the problem for me. Seems like at one point[1] they started excluding .git directories by default, got a bunch of backlash, reverted that change, but never changed the setting back for some users (like me).

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/1cgy93n/i_did_a_...

[Vegenoid]

Good to know, thanks for reporting back

[Ajedi32]

Thanks. Silently ignoring .git folders would be much more egregious than not backing up cloud drives in my opinion. The latter is at least somewhat understandable, though they should have been more transparent about it.

[Ajedi32]

Okay nevermind, I just checked and none of my git repos are being backed up; just the working copy. That's pretty awful.

[tehbeard]

Does the UI atleast hint there's hidden files or is it only by going to the filters you can find this out?

It seems incredibly stupid for a BACKUP PROGRAM to not list the hidden files instead of indicating they're hidden (e.g. _(hidden)_.git)