When are changes to SVS's Global Exclude list recognized by SVS?

Q:
When are changes to SVS's Global Exclude list recognized by SVS?

A:
It depends on how you modify the Global Exclude list. If you use SVS Admin or SVSCmd the changes will be recognized immediately because they both use the SVS library to notify the driver of the changes. The same would be true if you used the APIs provided in the SDK.

If you change the registry keys found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Altiris\FSL\Exclude then the changes would not be recognized by the driver until it gets reloaded -- in other words, when you restart your system. However, to make it easier on SVS users there's a SVScmd parameter you can call that will force the SVS driver to reload the global exclude list which is SVSCMD RELOAD.

It's also worth noting that this is similar for layers, instead of reseting or reloading you just activate the layer (you shouldn't be able to change excludes for an active layer).