Cache Directory Tagging

Abstract

Many applications create and manage directories containing cached information about content stored elsewhere, such as cached Web content or thumbnail-size versions of images or movies. For speed and storage efficiency we would often like to avoid backing up, archiving, or otherwise unnecessarily copying such directories around, but it is a pain to identify and individually exclude each such directory during data transfer operations. I propose an extremely simple convention by which applications can reliably "tag" any cache directories they create, for easy identification by backup systems and other data management utilities. Data management utilities can then heed or ignore these tags as the user sees fit.

The Specification

(Version 0.5 - not very long, moderately stable.)

Application Support Status

Caching Applications Archive/Backup Tools
The following applications are known to create and maintain caches of some kind in the user's home directory.

Applications that currently support this specification:

Positive responses received from developers of:

Discussion initiated with developers of:

The following archival tools support this tagging convention:

Other archival tools that are not (yet) directly sensitive to cache tags, but can be made so through the use of appropriate options or shell magic:

Please let me know of other applications you know of that should be on this list!

Related Links

Author: Bryan Ford, baford -=at=- mit -=dot=- edu