Importing a tree from a special remote when it has a preferred content configured currently only works when the expression does not use any terms that operate on keys. (Eg things like copies=).

e06feb7316af35b1277b7159a74c216c8f2e7422 implemented that. Could it be extended to also support using it with an expression that does operate on keys?

This would probably entail making any term of the expression that needs a key evaluate to true. Then it would import all files (that match also terms that don't need a key). After the import, it may turn out that the special remote doesn't want to contain particular content that was imported from it, and it would make sense that an export to the special remote would remove those files. --Joey

done --Joey