git-annex/doc/internals.mdwn
Joey Hess 8680c415de slow, stupid, and safe index updating
Always merge the git-annex branch into .git/annex/index before making a
commit from the index.

This ensures that, when the branch has been changed in any way
(by a push being received, or changes pulled directly into it, or
even by the user checking it out, and committing a change), the index
reflects those changes.

This is much too slow; it needs to be optimised to only update the
index when the branch has really changed, not every time.

Also, there is an unhandled race, when a change is made to the branch
right after the index gets updated. I left it in for now because it's
unlikely and I didn't want to complicate things with additional locking
yet.
2011-12-11 15:05:53 -04:00

87 lines
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Markdown

In the world of git, we're not scared about internal implementation
details, and sometimes we like to dive in and tweak things by hand. Here's
some documentation to that end.
## `.git/annex/objects/aa/bb/*/*`
This is where locally available file contents are actually stored.
Files added to the annex get a symlink checked into git that points
to the file content.
First there are two levels of directories used for hashing, to prevent
too many things ending up in any one directory.
Each subdirectory has the name of a key in one of the
[[key-value_backends|backends]]. The file inside also has the name of the key.
This two-level structure is used because it allows the write bit to be removed
from the subdirectories as well as from the files. That prevents accidentially
deleting or changing the file contents.
## The git-annex branch
This branch is managed by git-annex, with the contents listed below.
The file `.git/annex/index` is a separate git index file it uses
to accumulate changes for the git-annex branch.
Also, `.git/annex/journal/` is used to record changes before they
are added to git.
### `uuid.log`
Records the UUIDs of known repositories, and associates them with a
description of the repository. This allows git-annex to display something
more useful than a UUID when it refers to a repository that does not have
a configured git remote pointing at it.
The file format is simply one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a
space and then the description, followed by a timestamp. Example:
e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55 laptop timestamp=1317929189.157237s
26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55 usb disk timestamp=1317929330.769997s
## `remotes.log`
Holds persistent configuration settings for [[special_remotes]] such as
Amazon S3.
The file format is one line per remote, starting with the uuid of the
remote, followed by a space, and then a series of key=value pairs,
each separated by whitespace, and finally a timestamp.
## `trust.log`
Records the [[trust]] information for repositories. Does not exist unless
[[trust]] values are configured.
The file format is one line per repository, with the uuid followed by a
space, and then either `1` (trusted), `0` (untrusted), `?` (semi-trusted),
`X` (dead) and finally a timestamp.
Example:
e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55 1 timestamp=1317929189.157237s
26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55 ? timestamp=1317929330.769997s
Repositories not listed are semi-trusted.
## `aaa/bbb/*.log`
These log files record [[location_tracking]] information
for file contents. Again these are placed in two levels of subdirectories
for hashing. The name of the key is the filename, and the content
consists of a timestamp, either 1 (present) or 0 (not present), and
the UUID of the repository that has or lacks the file content.
Example:
1287290776.765152s 1 e605dca6-446a-11e0-8b2a-002170d25c55
1287290767.478634s 0 26339d22-446b-11e0-9101-002170d25c55
These files are designed to be auto-merged using git's union merge driver.
The timestamps allow the most recent information to be identified.
## `remote/web/aaa/bbb/*.log`
These log files record urls used by the
[[web_special_remote|special_remotes/web]]. Their format is similar
to the location tracking files, but with urls rather than UUIDs.