[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""Re: Not connect to remote as part of initremote?"""
 date="2018-09-11T17:31:53Z"
 content="""
@andrew while it might be possible in theory to set up a rsync special
remote that's usable without connecting to the rsync server yet, there
are other types of special remotes that do need to connect to the server.
S3 comes to mind; it needs to either create a bucket or check if an
existing bucket is already being used as a git-annex remote.

So, I don't think this can be supported generally
across all special remote implementations. We could try to support it for
specific ones like rsync. I don't actually see anywhere in the code for the
rsync special remote where initremote will connect to the remote server
though.
"""]]