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annex

  • Manage files with git, without checking their contents into git
  • Syncs two git repos (one local and one remote)

init

git init
git annex init
git annex init "My repo" # repo description

initremote

  • Creates a special (non-git) remote

Rclone remote

  • Under the hood it interacts with rclone using the rclone gitannex command
  • rclone gitannex -h for more info
# Get to know all the available options for a remote
git annex initremote MyRemote type=rclone --whatelse

# Create special remote
git annex initremote "Google Drive" \
      type=rclone \
      encryption=none \
      rcloneremotename=google-drive \
      rcloneprefix=my-files # defaults to "git-annex-rclone" directory

enableremote

git annex enableremote "Google Drive"

testremote

git annex testremote "Google Drive"

add

  • Files added with git annex become a symlink to a blob object at .git/annex/objects (even before checkout)
  • The symlink is usually called sidecar file
# Add all
git annex add .

# Add a file
git annex add "image.png"

# automatically annex files which matches the wildcard as part of the conventional git add
git config annex.largefiles 'include=*.png'
  • Whenever an annexed file is moved to a subfolder, the symlink is broken. It it latter corrected by git-annex when committing the file (by a pre-commit hook)

copy

  • Copy annexed file to/from another remote
# to a special remote
git annex copy "image.png" --to "Google Drive"

get

  • Get the file from a symlink
# Get all symlink contents
git annex get .

# Get specific symlink
git annex get "song.mp3"

sync

  • Sync all symlinks to a remote repo
  • It's a combination of the git annex pull and git annex push commands
# Sync metadata only
git annex sync

# specify the remote to sync with
git annex sync "my-remote"

# sync metadata + content
git annex sync --content

drop

  • Remove the content of a file from the local repository
  • The file can have been removed from the tree but it is still present in the local repo
git annex drop "file.img"

unused

# Get annex objects not referenced in the git tree
git annex unused

# ... in a special remote
git annex unused --from <remote>

dropunused

git annex dropunused <number>
git annex dropunused 1
git annex dropunused 1-4
git annex dropunused all

# ... in a special remote
git annex dropunused --from <remote> <number>