32 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
I've felt for a while that git-annex needed better support for managing
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the contents of past versions of files that are stored in the annex. I know
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some people get confused about whether git-annex even supports old versions
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of files (it does, but you should use indirect mode; direct mode doesn't
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guarantee old versions of files will be preserved).
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So today I've worked on adding command-line power for managing past
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versions: a new `--all` option.
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So, if you want to copy every version of every file in your repository to
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an archive, you can run `git annex copy --all --to archive`.
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Or if you've got a repository on a drive that's dying, you can run
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`git annex copy --all --to newdrive`, and then on the new drive, run `git
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annex fsck --all` to check all the data.
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In a bare repository, `--all` is default, so you can run `git annex get`
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inside a bare repository and it will try to get every version of every file
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that it can from the remotes.
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The tricky thing about `--all` is that since it's operating on objects and
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not files, it can't check `.gitattributes` settings, which are tied to the
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file name. I worried for a long time that adding `--all` would make
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annex.numcopies settings in those files not be honored, and that this would
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be a Bad Thing. The solution turns out to be simple: I just didn't
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implement `git annex drop --all`! Dropping is the only action that needs to
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check numcopies (move can also reduce the number of copies, but explicitly
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bypasses numcopies settings).
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I also added an `--unused` option. So if you have a repository that has
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been accumulating history, and you'd like to move all file contents not
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currently in use to a central server, you can run `git annex unused; git
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annex move --unused --to origin`
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