ManifestStaticFilesStorage should have file exclude patterns.

[Carsten Fuchs]

ManifestStaticFilesStorage covers all files found by the static files finders.
However, it is not always desirable to have all files covered:

• files for user download, e.g. usermanual.pdf:
  • such files are not cached by browsers and thus require no cache busting
  • files with hashes in their file name impair the user experience
• files where the cache busting is done by other means:
  • e.g. when an explicit version string is already kept in other ways, e.g. manually as in jquery-3.4.1.slim.min.js

Thus it would be helpful if files could be excluded from the manifest processing. For example, a setting with glob patterns could be introduced such as:

STATICFILES_MANIFEST_EXCLUDES = (
    "*.pdf",
    "static/3rdparty/",
)

Does that make sense?

[Mariusz Felisiak]

A new setting is not necessary, you can use ​the collectstatic --ignore option, see #28566.

[Carsten Fuchs]

Hello Felix,

sorry, my description was probably not clear:
When we use ManifestStaticFilesStorage, the collectstatic command copies and creates static files such that the result is, for example:

usermanual.4b127df11c35.pdf
usermanual.pdf

In a template, using {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %}, links to .../static/usermanual.4b127df11c35.pdf are generated. What I intended with the above suggested STATICFILES_MANIFEST_EXCLUDES setting is to have only

usermanual.pdf

copied and {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %} generating a link to .../static/usermanual.pdf, just as if not the manifest, but the default StaticFilesStorage was used. (For all files not covered by STATICFILES_MANIFEST_EXCLUDES, the hashed paths should be used.)

In contrast to that, collectstatic --ignore doesn't copy the ignored files at all, causing {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %} to raise an exception.

[Mariusz Felisiak]

Replying to Carsten Fuchs:

Hello Felix,

sorry, my description was probably not clear:
When we use ManifestStaticFilesStorage, the collectstatic command copies and creates static files such that the result is, for example:

usermanual.4b127df11c35.pdf
usermanual.pdf

In a template, using {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %}, links to .../static/usermanual.4b127df11c35.pdf are generated. What I intended with the above suggested STATICFILES_MANIFEST_EXCLUDES setting is to have only

usermanual.pdf

copied and {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %} generating a link to .../static/usermanual.pdf, just as if not the manifest, but the default StaticFilesStorage was used. (For all files not covered by STATICFILES_MANIFEST_EXCLUDES, the hashed paths should be used.)

In contrast to that, collectstatic --ignore doesn't copy the ignored files at all, causing {% static 'usermanual.pdf' %} to raise an exception.

You should be able to ​write a custom subclass of ​ManifestStaticFilesStorage for this. We don't want to provide settings for customizing the ManifestStaticFilesStorage behavior.

[Carsten Fuchs]

Okay! I thought this might be of general interest, but reconsidering I think you're right, this is better placed in a subclass. Thank you!