An easy way to see this in action is to have an unlocked file, and touch the
object file.
While all code that compares inode caches for object files needs to be
prepared for this kind of problem and fall back to verification, having
fsck notice it and correct it is cheap (as long as fsck is being run
anyway) and ensures that if it happens for some unusual reason, there's a
way for the user to notice that it's happening.
Not that, when annex.thin is in use, the earlier call to isUnmodified
(and also potentially earlier calls to inAnnex in eg, verifyLocationLog)
will fix up the same problem silently. That might prevent the warning
being displayed, although probably it still will be, because the
Database.Keys write of the InodeCache will be queued but will not have
happened yet. I can't see a way to improve this, but it's not great.
Sponsored-by: Dartmouth College's Datalad project
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/>