The old `git annex import /dir` interface should be removed, in favor of
the new import from special remote interface, which can be used with a
directory special remote to do the same kind of operation.

There have always been complaints about the old interface being surprising
and/or not doing quite what some users want.
Tried to find a principled way to address some of that with the "duplicate"
options, but users just complain they're confusing (which they certianly
are) and don't quite do what they want.

The fundamental mistake that the old interface made is it conflated
copying content into the repository, deleting content from the directory, 
and updating the working tree. The new interface decouples all 3,
only doing the first, and updating a tracking branch. The user is then free
to merge the tracking branch as-is, or otherwise modify before merging.
There are some options to manipulate the tracking branch in commonly
wanted ways, which just boil down do git branch manipulation. Less common
desires can be handled using all of git's facilities. As for deleting from
the directory, that's an export of a branch, which can just be an empty
branch if they want to delete everything, or again they can use all of git
to construct the branch with the changes they desire.

So while it's not been used as much as the old interface, I think the new
interface will be much more flexible to the varied needs of users. What's
less clear is if it can well support every way that the old interface can
be used.

Of course the first pain point is that the user has to set up a directory
special remote. Which may be annoying if they are importing from a variety
of different directories ad-hoc.

Another likely pain point is ad-hoc importing of individual files or
files matched by wildcard. The new interface is much more about importing
whole trees, perhaps configured by preferred content settings

One approach would be to make the old interface be implemented using the
new interface, and paper over the cracks, by eg setting up a directory
special remote automatically.

Or, the old interface could warn when used, linking to some documentation
about how to accomplish the same tasks with the new interface.

Either could be done incrementally, eg start with the most common import
cases, convert to the new interface, and keep others using the old
interface.

--[[Joey]]

[[!tag needsthought]]
