Dropping an object with drop --unused or dropunused will mark it as
dead, preventing fsck --all from complaining about it after it's been
dropped from all repositories.
If another repository still has a copy, it won't be treated as dead
until it's also dropped from there.
The drop has to use --unused, can't be --key or something else, because
this indicates that the user has recently ran git-annex unused. If it
checked the unused log on every drop, bad things would happen when the
unused log was out of date, eg a file used to be unused but then got
re-added. Marking such a file as dead could be confusing. When the user
uses --unused/dropunused, they must consider the unused information to be
up-to-date.
The particular workflow this enables is:
git annex add foo
git annex unannex foo
git annex unused
git annex drop --unused / dropunused
git annex fsck --all # no warnings
The docs for git-annex unannex say to use git-annex unused and dropunused,
so the user should be pointed in this direction when they want to undo an
accidental add.
Sponsored-by: Brock Spratlen on Patreon
git-annex allows managing files with git, without checking the file
contents into git. While that may seem paradoxical, it is useful when
dealing with files larger than git can currently easily handle, whether due
to limitations in memory, checksumming time, or disk space.
For documentation, see doc/ or <https://git-annex.branchable.com/>
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