git-annex/doc/todo/import_tree.mdwn

When `git annex export treeish` is used to export to a remote, and the
remote allows files to somehow be edited on it, then there ought to be a
way to import the changes back from the remote into the git repository.

The command could be `git annex import treeish` or something like that.

It would ask the special remote to list changed/new files, and deleted
files. Download the changed/new files and inject into the annex. 
Generate a new treeish, with parent the treeish that was exported,
that has the modifications in it.

Updating the working copy is then done by merging the import treeish.
This way, conflicts will be detected and handled as normal by git.

The remote interface needs one new method, to list the changed/new and
deleted files. It will be up to remotes to implement that if they can
support importing.

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One way for a remote to do it, assuming it has mtimes, is to export
files to the remote with their mtime set to the date of the treeish
being exported (when the treeish is a commit, which has dates, and not
a raw tree). Then the remote can simply enumerate all files,
with their mtimes, and look for files that have mtimes
newer than the last exported treeish's date, as well as noticing
deleted and newly added/renamed files.

A similar approach is for the remote to preserve object file timestamps,
but keep a list somewhere (eg a file on the remote) of the timestamps of
each exported file, and then it can later look for files with newer
timestamps.

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If multiple repos can access the remote at the same time, then there's a
potential problem when one is exporting a new tree, and the other one is
importing from the remote.

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See also, [[adb_special_remote]]