git-annex/doc/devblog/day_394__implicit_vs_explicit.mdwn

git-annex has always balanced implicit and explicit behavior.
Enabling a git repository to be used with git-annex needs an explicit init,
to avoid foot-shooting; but a clone of a repository that is already
using git-annex will be implicitly initialized. Git remotes implicitly
are checked to see if they use git-annex, so the user can immediately
follow `git remote add` with `git annex get` to get files from it.

There's a fine line here, and implicit git remote enabling sometimes
crosses it; sometimes the remote doesn't have git-annex-shell, and so
there's an ugly error message and annex-ignore has to be set to avoid
trying to enable that git remote again. Sometimes the probe of a remote
can occur when the user doesn't really expect it to (and it can involve a
ssh password prompt).

Part of the problem is, there's not an explicit way to enable a git remote
to be used by git-annex. So, today, I made `git annex enableremote` do
that, when the remote name passed to it is a git remote rather than a
special remote. This way, you can avoid the implicit behavior if you want
to.

I also made `git annex enableremote` un-set annex-ignore, so if a remote
got that set due to a transient configuration problem, it can be explicitly
enabled.