The journal read optimisation in aeca7c220 later got fixed in eedd73b84
to stage and commit any files that were left in the journal by a
previous git-annex run. That's necessary for the optimisation to work
correctly. But it also meant that alwayscommit=false started committing
the previous git-annex processes journalled changes, which defeated the
purpose of the config setting entirely.
So, disable the optimisation when alwayscommit=false, leaving the
files in the journal and not committing them. See my comments on the bug
report for why this seemed the best approach.
Also fixes a problem when annex.merge-annex-branches=false and there
are changes in the journal. That config indirectly prevents committing
the journal. (Which seems a bit odd given its name, but it always has..)
So, when there were changes in the journal, perhaps left there due to
alwayscommit=false being set before, the optimisation would prevent
git-annex from reading the journal files, and it would operate with out
of date information.