Whew, I got the finishing touches on the import tree feature, and it's merged into master! Still work to do on that, particularly supporting more interesting special remotes than directory. It may be two or three weeks until I get back to working on it. Even with only directory special remotes, some nice things can be done with this. Like bi-directional syncing between a removable drive with no git-annex repository on it, and a subdirectory of the git-annex repository: $ git config remote.drive.annex-tracking-branch master:subdir $ date > /mnt/new-from-drive $ date > subdir/new-from-repo $ git annex add add subdir/new-from-repo ok $ git annex sync --content commit 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 120000 subdir/new-from-repo ok list drive ok import drive new-from-drive ok update refs/remotes/drive/master ok Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy. subdir/new-from-drive | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 120000 subdir/new-from-drive export drive new-from-repo ok