Hello,

I am trying to wrap my head around annex still. I'm creating a source local git repo, editing an annex file, and then syncing in a second repo. In that second repo I'm trying to figure out how I can get a status notifying me that a file is out of date.

If I use 'annex sync --content' the files are all up to date, as expected, but what I kind of expected is 'annex status' to say something like 'files out of date, blah blah'. I am spelling out my example below.

Annex version is 5.20140613

I create a source and target repo, and I add a git managed file and an annex managed file

$ mkdir source target
$ cd source
$ git init
$ git annex init
$ cat > gitfile
hi this is my git file
$ cat > annexfile
hi this is my annex file
$ git add gitfile 
$ git annex add annexfile 
$ git commit -m 'init commit'
$ cd ../target
$ git clone ../source/ .
$ ls -al
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  170 Jul 15 15:55 .
drwxr-xr-x  136 Jul 15 15:54 ..
drwxr-xr-x  442 Jul 15 15:55 .git
lrwxr-xr-x  180 Jul 15 15:55 annexfile -> .git/annex/objects/Qp/F0/SHA256E-s25--045cf30cb201c6723cb6fad9ca539f639de7f242b87775b876ef9ccb1f577ccf/SHA256E-s25--045cf30cb201c6723cb6fad9ca539f639de7f242b87775b876ef9ccb1f577ccf
-rw-r--r--  23 Jul 15 15:55 gitfile
$ git annex sync
...
To [base path]/target/../source/
 * [new branch]      git-annex -> synced/git-annex
 * [new branch]      master -> synced/master
ok
$ cat gitfile 
hi this is my git file
$ cat annexfile 
cat: annexfile: No such file or directory
$ git annex sync --content
$ cat annexfile 
hi this is my annex file

So far so good. Now I'm going to edit my annexed file in source repo and see if I can find out that the file was edited in the target

$ cd ..
$ cd source
$ git annex edit annexfile 
$ cat > annexfile 
wow I changed my annex file
$ git annex add annexfile 
$ git commit -m 'changed an annex file'
$ cd ..
$ cd target
$ git pull
$ cat annexfile 
cat: annexfile: No such file or directory
$ git annex sync
$ ls
annexfile gitfile
$ cat annexfile 
cat: annexfile: No such file or directory
$ git annex status
[no output]

Here is where I'd expect something saying 'annexfile is out of date', etc.

I can infer it because the link is missing, but I'm sure there's a more logical way.

$ git annex sync --content
$ cat annexfile 
wow I changed my annex file

After I synced content all is well.