Cannot get the syntax of --include-from right

[Robert Parker]

Here is part of my backup script:

nice -n 15 rsync -avl --exclude=".*" \
--include-from="/home/bob/backup_includes" \
"$fromdir" "$todir"

Here is the content of /home/bob/backup_includes

/home/bob/.vimrc
/home/bob/.gitconfig

My problem is that neither the .vimrc nor .gitconfig are copied to the
backup directory.

I have read the man page about --include-from but clearly I don't understand it.

Thanks,
Bob Parker