Hey,
I write an article for the univerity about git-annex assistant and I'm a little bit confused about the function of the assistant. Because an advantage of git-annex is that you can hold different files at different places in one repository, but this isn't anymore, or? The assistant syncs every file to every place of the repository. And this makes it just to another Dropbox (not direct the same) pentant or I'm not correct?
The transfer group is just for transfer files to other repositories, which are not connected with the network or?
I'm using ppa, ubuntu 12.04 lts, vers, 2013-12-13
JP Lührig
The assistant necessarily simplifies some things git-annex does, so that it can automate them, and this includes keeping files synced to everywhere by default. There are ways to configure the assistant to only keep a subset of files on a computer, including archive directories. Underneath, there is the quite powerful preferred content DSL, which can be used to configure lots more interesting behavior about what goes where. So far only some common scenarios have been made easily available in the webappp, but there's potential for lots more configurability here, if a good UI for it is built.
I think the assistant is probably better than dropbox at handling external removable media, used for backups or archiving. (But I have not evaluated, or actually even used dropbox myself. My goal is not to copy dropbox.) And it's better at encryption, and it allows using a variety of cloud services rather than only one provider.