It's a semi-common point of confusion that numcopies is not something
these commands go out and copy files around specifically to satisfy,
without further configuration in preferred content. So this is a good
addition, but it also seemed too long and too specific to the user's
particular situation.
I got bitten several times in the past by the fact that local preferred
content expressions are not violated (even temporarily) in order to
satisfy numcopies or other remotes' preferred content expressions.
Mostly in the form of the local repo not allowing arbitrary files in
(e.g. because it's set to only want `present` files). This note I add
here explains how to get out of this situation with
`approxlackingcopies=1`.
It might be too specific for this manpage, but I didn't find a better
place to put it.
This ended up having an interface like sync, rather than like get/copy/drop.
That let it be implemented in terms of sync, which took a lot less code.
Also, it lets it handle many of the edge cases that sync does, such as
getting files that are not visible in a --hide-missing branch, and sending
files to exporttree remotes.
As well as being easier to implement, `git-annex satisfy myremote` makes
sense as it satisfies the preferred content settings of the remote.
`git-annex satisfy somefile` does not form a sentence that makes sense. So
while -C can be a little bit annoying, it still makes sense to have this
syntax.
Note that, while I initially thought this would also satisfy numcopies, it
does not. Arguably it ought to. But, sync does not send files in order to
satisfy numcopies, it only sends files to satisfy preferred content. And
it's important that this transfer the same files as sync does, because
it will probably be used in a workflow where the user sometimes syncs and
sometimes satisfies, and does not expect satisfy to do things that sync
would not do.
(Also opened a new bug that also affects sync et all, not only this command.)
Sponsored-by: Nicholas Golder-Manning on Patreon
