git-annex/doc/git-annex-smudge.mdwn

# NAME

git-annex smudge - git filter driver for git-annex

# SYNOPSIS

git annex smudge [--clean] file

git annex smudge --update

# DESCRIPTION

This command lets git-annex be used as a git filter driver which lets
annexed files in the git repository to be unlocked, instead
of being symlinks, and lets `git add` store files in the annex.

When adding a file with `git add`, the annex.largefiles config is
consulted to decide if a given file should be added to git as-is,
or if its content are large enough to need to use git-annex.
The annex.gitaddtoannex setting overrides that; setting it to false
prevents `git add` from adding files to the annex.

However, if git-annex can tell that a file was annexed before,
it will still be added to the annex even when those configs would normally
prevent it. Two examples of this are adding a modified version of an
annexed file, and moving an annexed file to a new filename and adding that.

The git configuration to use this command as a filter driver is as follows.
This is normally set up for you by git-annex init, so you should
not need to configure it manually.

	[filter "annex"]
	        smudge = git-annex smudge %f
	        clean = git-annex smudge --clean %f

To make git use that filter driver, it needs to be configured in
the `.gitattributes` file or in `.git/info/attributes`. The latter
is normally configured when a repository is initialized, with the following
contents:

	* filter=annex
	.* !filter

The smudge filter does not provide git with the content of annexed files,
because that would be slow and triggers memory leaks in git. Instead,
it records which worktree files need to be updated, and 
`git annex smudge --update` later updates the work tree to contain
the content. That is run by several git hooks, including post-checkout
and post-merge. However, a few git commands, notably `git stash` and
`git cherry-pick`, do not run any hooks, so after using those commands
you can manually run `git annex smudge --update` to update the working
tree.

# SEE ALSO

[[git-annex]](1)

# AUTHOR

Joey Hess <id@joeyh.name>

Warning: Automatically converted into a man page by mdwn2man. Edit with care.