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Since 24.03.2024, hellotux.com now offers git-annex-branded shirts, hoodies and backpacks. Just in time, right before the distribits meeting.

This cooperation was initiated by Yann Büchau (nobodyinperson).

Posted Mon Mar 25 06:27:47 2024

git-annex 10.20240227 released with these changes

  • importfeed: Added --scrape option, which uses yt-dlp to screen scrape the equivilant of an RSS feed.
  • importfeed --force: Don't treat it as a failure when an already downloaded file exists. (Fixes a behavior change introduced in 10.20230626.)
  • importfeed --force: Avoid creating duplicates of existing already downloaded files when yt-dlp or a special remote was used.
  • addurl, importfeed: Added --raw-except option.
  • stack.yaml: Update to lts-22.9 and use crypton.
  • assistant, undo: When committing, let the usual git commit hooks run.
  • Added annex.commitmessage-command config.
  • pre-commit: Avoid committing the git-annex branch (except when a commit is made in a view, which changes metadata).
  • Pass --no-warnings to yt-dlp.
Posted Tue Feb 27 17:02:26 2024

git-annex 10.20240129 released with these changes

  • info: Added "annex sizes of repositories" table to the overall display.
  • import: Sped up import from special remotes.
  • import: Added --message/-m option.
  • Support using commands that implement the Stateless OpenPGP command line interface, as an alternative to gpg. Currently only supported for encryption=shared special remotes, when annex.shared-sop-command is configured.
  • test: Test a specified Stateless OpenPGP command when run with eg --test-git-config annex.shared-sop-command=sqop
  • Improve disk free space checking when transferring unsized keys to local git remotes.
  • Added configs annex.stalldetection-download, annex.stalldetection-upload, annex.bwlimit-download, annex.bwlimit-upload, and similar per-remote configs.
  • Improve annex.stalldetection to handle remotes that update progress less frequently than the configured time period.
  • external: Monitor file size when getting content from external special remotes and use that to update the progress meter, in case the external special remote program does not report progress.
  • Added --expected-present file matching option.
  • webapp: Added --port option, and annex.port config.
  • assistant: When generating a gpg secret key, avoid hardcoding the key algorithm and size.
Posted Mon Jan 29 18:12:23 2024

git-annex 10.20231227 released with these changes

  • migrate: Support distributed migrations by recording each migration, and adding a --update option that updates the local repository incrementally, hard linking annex objects to their new keys.
  • pull, sync: When operating on content, automatically handle distributed migrations.
  • Added annex.syncmigrations config that can be set to false to prevent pull and sync from migrating object content.
  • migrate: Added --apply option that (re)applies all recorded distributed migrations to the objects in repository.
  • migrate: Support adding size to URL keys that were added with --relaxed, by running eg: git-annex migrate --backend=URL foo
  • When importing from a special remote, support preferred content expressions that use terms that match on keys (eg "present", "copies=1"). Such terms are ignored when importing, since the key is not known yet. Before, such expressions caused the import to fail.
  • Support git-annex copy/move --from-anywhere --to remote.
  • Make git-annex get/copy/move --from foo override configuration of remote.foo.annex-ignore, as documented.
  • Lower precision of timestamps in git-annex branch, which can reduce the size of the branch by up to 8%.
  • sync: Fix locking problems during merge when annex.pidlock is set.
  • Avoid a problem with temp file names ending in "." on certian filesystems that have problems with such filenames.
  • sync, push: Avoid trying to send individual files to special remotes configured with importtree=yes exporttree=no, which would always fail.
  • Fix a crash opening sqlite databases when run in a non-unicode locale. (Needs persistent-sqlite 2.13.3.)
Posted Wed Dec 27 23:28:03 2023

git-annex 10.20231129 released with these changes

  • Fix bug in git-annex copy --from --to that skipped files that were locally present.
  • Make git-annex copy --from --to --fast actually fast.
  • Fix crash of enableremote when the special remote has embedcreds=yes.
  • Ignore directories and other unusual files in .git/annex/journal/
  • info: Added calculation of combined annex size of all repositories.
  • log: Added options --sizesof, --sizes and --totalsizes that display how the size of repositories changed over time.
  • log: Added options --interval, --bytes, --received, and --gnuplot to tune the output of the above added options.
  • findkeys: Support --largerthan and --smallerthan.
  • importfeed: Use caching database to avoid needing to list urls on every run, and avoid using too much memory.
  • Improve memory use of --all when using annex.private.
  • lookupkey: Sped up --batch.
  • Windows: Consistently avoid ending standard output lines with CR. This matches the behavior of git on Windows.
  • Windows: Fix CRLF handling in some log files.
  • Windows: When git-annex init is installing hook scripts, it will avoid ending lines with CR for portability. Existing hook scripts that do have CR line endings will not be changed.
Posted Wed Nov 29 20:01:14 2023

git-annex 10.20230926 released with these changes

  • Fix more breakage caused by git's fix for CVE-2022-24765, this time involving a remote (either local or ssh) that is a repository not owned by the current user.
  • Fix using git remotes that are bare when git is configured with safe.bareRepository = explicit.
  • Fix linker optimisation in linux standalone tarballs.
  • adb: Avoid some problems with unusual characters in exporttree filenames that confuse adb shell commands.
  • push: When on an adjusted branch, propagate changes to parent branch before updating export remotes.
  • lookupkey: Added --ref option.
  • enableremote: Avoid overwriting existing git remote when passed the uuid of a specialremote that was earlier initialized with the same name.
  • Support being built with crypton rather than the no-longer maintained cryptonite.
  • Removed the vendored git-lfs and the GitLfs build flag.
Posted Tue Sep 26 17:30:03 2023

We are happy to announce that the call for participation for the first ever Distribits meeting is now online at https://distribits.live/

This meeting is organized by the folks behind git-annex and DataLad. We aim to bring together enthusiasts of tools and workflows in the domain of distributed data.

We are looking forward to April 2024 and to meeting people from everywhere, online and in Düsseldorf.

Registration is open now and until October 15. Please consider submitting a talk if you are doing something interesting or unusual with git-annex.

Posted Thu Sep 14 16:38:52 2023

Similar to the yearly git user survey, there is a 2018 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer the questions!

Since git-annex is seeing increasing use to manage scientific data, the survey also includes some extra questions about that at the end.

Posted Sat Dec 1 15:46:38 2018

git-annex 6.20180626 is an important security fix release.

See the advisory for details about the security holes fixed in this release.

After upgrading git-annex, you should restart any git-annex assistant processes.

Several changes to git-annex's behavior had to be made as part of the security fixes:

  • A security fix has changed git-annex to refuse to download content from some special remotes when the content cannot be verified with a hash check. In particular URL and WORM keys stored on such remotes won't be downloaded. See the documentation of the annex.security.allow-unverified-downloads configuration for how to deal with this if it affects your files.

  • A security fix has changed git-annex to only support http, https, and ftp URL schemes by default. You can enable other URL schemes, at your own risk, using annex.security.allowed-url-schemes.

  • A related security fix prevents git-annex from connecting to http servers (and proxies) on localhost or private networks. This can be overridden, at your own risk, using annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses.

  • Setting annex.web-options no longer is enough to make curl be used, and youtube-dl is also no longer used by default. See the documentation of annex.security.allowed-http-addresses for details and how to enable them.

  • The annex.web-download-command configuration has been removed, use annex.web-options instead.

Posted Tue Jun 26 16:00:19 2018

Similar to the yearly git user survey, there is a 2015 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer the questions!

Posted Mon Oct 19 20:05:12 2015

Similar to the yearly git user survey, I am doing a 2013 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer my questions!

Posted Fri Nov 22 17:17:21 2013

Thanks to my recent successful git-annex crowdfunding campaign, $1000 has been set aside to award others for their contributions to git-annex by the end of 2013. This is not a lot of money, but I hope that the reward and recognition will encourage some more people to work on git-annex.

You don't need to know Haskell! You could contribute some interesting and useful special remote hooks, or write better documentation.

On the other hand, if you have learned Haskell, this might be your first chance to make some money with it! Some ideas for things to work on that would be particularly award-worthy:

  • Port git-annex to IOS, using ghc-ios. I don't plan to ever do this myself, but you could make it happen.
  • Get the git-annex assistant working in Windows, building on the existing port to Windows. Otherwise, this is on my roadmap for February.
  • Solve existing bugs or todo items. There are more than I can keep up with.

The amount of the awards will vary depending on the size of the contribution. Since this is getting started later than is ideal, I reserve the right to extend it past the end of the year if I don't get enough participants.

If you'd like to participate in this program, just email me at id@joeyh.name. --Joey

Posted Thu Oct 10 22:02:33 2013

git-annex will be briefly presented at FOSDEM, on Sunday February 4th at 15:40. Details.

Thanks to Richard Hartmann for making this presentation.

Posted Sat Feb 4 18:30:28 2012

Christophe-Marie Duquesne has just announced Sharebox, a FUSE filesystem relying on git-annex:

What are your goals?  
Seamless synchronization "à la dropbox".  
Ability to use with big binary files such as mp3/movies.  
Entirely decentralized.  
Don't use unnecessary space  
Keep it simple: avoid special VCS commands and keep a filesystem  
interface as much as possible.

While still alpha, this is promising. --Joey

Posted Thu Mar 31 18:06:14 2011

Linux Weekly News has a nice article on git-annex in it this week.

Posted Thu Dec 9 15:35:07 2010