[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2021-01-19T15:58:37Z"
 content="""
Direct mode was only supported by old versions of git-annex. It did work on
windows. The replacement (adusted unlocked branches + annex.thin) is better
in every way except one: On windows (and some filesystems like FAT), it is
not able to avoid storing 2 copies of files, because git-annex isn't able
to hard link files there. If there was a reasonable way to do that on
windows, that could be a big improvement, but I have not dug into whether
windows has anything similar enough to hard link for git-annex to use it.

git-annex scales to hundreds of thousands of files.

If I had two directories like your V# and V#-related, I might make them
each into their own repository, and set them each as a git remote of the
other. That would let git-annex know that identical files have two copies.
(Or, the parent directory could be made into a git-annex repository, which
would let git-annex deduplicate identical files, but since that needs
symlink support, it won't happen on windows.)

You can certianly use GIT_DIR with git-annex.

Generally the best thing to do with storage on the other side of a network
connection is to run git-annex on it locally, or use it as some kind of
special remote.
"""]]
