[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2020-08-10T16:22:15Z"
 content="""
Preferred content expressions can have a number of terms that require a
git-annex key to evaluate. Files not managed by git-annex do not have such
keys, so it's not possible to evaluate preferred content expressions
against them.

Another way to look at it is that the export remote is equivilant to a git
remote. Pushing a git tree to a git remote necessarily stores all the files
managed by git onto that remote and so it makes sense for exporting to do
the same. (importing also always gets new versions of these small files w/o
checking the preferred content setting, equivilant to git pull.)

So, even if it were possible to match some preferred content expressions
against non-annexed files (eg ones that use only the filename or size),
I don't think it would be good for that to be done for exports.

I have improved the documentation of git-annex export to mention that
it exports all git files.
"""]]
