67245ae00f
This format is designed to detect accidental appends, while having some room for future expansion. Detect when an unlocked file whose content is not present has gotten some other content appended to it, and avoid treating it as a pointer file, so that appended content will not be checked into git, but will be annexed like any other file. Dropped the max size of a pointer file down to 32kb, it was around 80 kb, but without any good reason and certianly there are no valid pointer files anywhere that are larger than 8kb, because it's just been specified what it means for a pointer file with additional data even looks like. I assume 32kb will be good enough for anyone. ;-) Really though, it needs to be some smallish number, because that much of a file in git gets read into memory when eg, catting pointer files. And since we have no use cases for the extra lines of a pointer file yet, except possibly to add some human-visible explanation that it is a git-annex pointer file, 32k seems as reasonable an arbitrary number as anything. Increasing it would be possible, eg to 64k, as long as users of such jumbo pointer files didn't mind upgrading all their git-annex installations to one that supports the new larger size. Sponsored-by: Dartmouth College's Datalad project
25 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
25 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
A pointer file is one of two ways that an annex object can be checked into
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git. The other is a symbolic link pointing to a file in the
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.git/annex/objects/ directory.
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A pointer file starts with "/annex/objects/", which is followed
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by the key (see [[key_format]]). (In some situations a pointer file
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might instead contain the content of a symlink target.)
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Pointer files usually have a newline after the key. This is not required.
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A carriage return followed by a newline is also accepted, as is end of file.
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After that, there is usually nothing more in a pointer file, but git-annex
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does support pointer files with additional text on subsequent lines.
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Every such subsequent line has to contain "/annex/" somewhere in it,
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and end in a newline. Otherwise it not considered to be a valid pointer file.
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The maximum size of a pointer file is 32 kb. If it is any longer, it is not
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considered to be a valid pointer file.
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The possibility exists that a pointer file is in a working tree,
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representing an annex object that is not present, and something appends
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data onto it accidentally. The limitation that each line of a valid
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pointer file contains "/annex/" and that it cannot be larger than 32kb
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let such a situation be detected.
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