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 In that second repo I'm trying to figure out how I can get a status notifying me that a file is out of date.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the files are all up to date, as expected, but what I kind of expected is 'annex status' to say something like 'files out of date, blah blah'.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Here is where I'd expect something saying 'annexfile is out of date', etc.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
As soon as git-annex syncs with a remote that has made changes to the repository, any new files or files that have been modified, and the content is not yet available in the local repository will be broken symlinks. You can generally easily see a broken symlink by running
ls, at least with a goodlson eg Linux that supports colorization. (Look for the red filenames.) Many file managers also represent broken symlinks in a visual way.Or, you can run a command like
git annex whereis $fileand see if it includes "here" in the list of locations.Or, you can run
git annex find --not --in hereto find all files whose current content is not present.The reason
git annex statusdoesn't say is that it's focused on showing you which files in the local repository have not yet been committed to git. Thegit annex listcommand has a similar one line per file output, but puts a "_" in the first column (under "here") if the file is not locally present.