git-annex can transfer data to and from configured git remotes. Normally those remotes are normal git repositories (bare and non-bare; local and remote), that store the file contents in their own git-annex directory.

But, git-annex also extends git's concept of remotes, with these special types of remotes. These can be used by git-annex to store and retrieve the content of files. They cannot be used by other git commands, and the git history is not stored in them.

The above special remotes are built into git-annex, and can be used to tie git-annex into many cloud services.

Here are specific instructions for using git-annex with various services:

If a service is not mentioned above, it's worth checking if rclone supports it, then you can use the rclone special remote.

Want to add support for something else? Write your own!

Ways to use special remotes

There are many use cases for a special remote. You could use it as a backup. You could use it to archive files offline in a drive with encryption enabled so if the drive is stolen your data is not. You could git annex move --to specialremote large files when your local drive is getting full, and then git annex move the files back when free space is again available. You could have one repository copy files to a special remote, and then git annex get them on another repository, to transfer the files between computers that do not communicate directly.

None of these use cases are particular to particular special remote types. Most special remotes can all be used in these and other ways. It largely doesn't matter for your use what underlying transport the special remote uses.

Setting up a special remote

To initialize a new special remote, use git-annex initremote. See the documentation for the special remote you want to use for details about configuration and examples of how to initremote it.

Once a special remote has been initialize, other clones of the repository can also enable it, by using git-annex enableremote with the same name that was used to initialize it. (Run the command without any name to get a list of available special remotes.)

Initializing or enabling a special remote adds it as a remote of your git repository. You can't use git commands like git pull with the remote (usually, there are exceptions like git-lfs), but you can use git-annex commands.

Unused content on special remotes

Over time, special remotes can accumulate file content that is no longer referred to by files in git. Normally, unused content in the current repository is found by running git annex unused. To detect unused content on special remotes, instead use git annex unused --from. Example:

$ git annex unused --from mys3
unused mys3 (checking for unused data...) 
  Some annexed data on mys3 is not used by any files in this repository.
    NUMBER  KEY
    1       WORM-s3-m1301674316--foo
  (To see where data was previously used, try: git log --stat -S'KEY')
  (To remove unwanted data: git-annex dropunused --from mys3 NUMBER)
$ git annex dropunused --from mys3 1
dropunused 12948 (from mys3...) ok

Removing special remotes

Like git remotes, a special remote can be removed from your repository by using git remote remove. Note that does not delete the special remote, or prevent other repositories from enabling or using it.

Testing special remotes

To make sure that a special remote is working correctly, you can use the git annex testremote command. This expects you to have set up the remote as usual, and it then runs a lot of tests, using random data. It's particularly useful to test new implementations of special remotes.