I now have this topology working:
assistant ---> {bare repo, special remote} <--- assistant
And, I think, also this one:
+----------- bare repo --------+
v v
assistant ---> special remote <--- assistant
While before with assistant <---> assistant connections, both sides got
location info updated after a transfer, in this topology, the bare repo
*might* get its location info updated, but the other assistant has no way to
know that it did. And a special remote doesn't record location info,
so transfers to it won't propigate out location log changes at all.
So, for these to work, after a transfer succeeds, the git-annex branch
needs to be pushed. This is done by recording a synthetic commit has
occurred, which lets the pusher handle pushing out the change (which will
include actually committing any still journalled changes to the git-annex
branch).
Of course, this means rather a lot more syncing action than happened
before. At least the pusher bundles together very close together pushes,
somewhat. Currently it just waits 2 seconds between each push.