I don't think it's a bug or a todo, just a request for clarification.
So, I installed git-annex first on a Mac, and created the initial repository, and started dropping stuff into it. All fine.
Created a second repository on an external (but never disconnected, also does Time Machine) drive. All fine. Everything's there.
Went across the room to my Linux desktop, installed git-annex, and tried to pair it to my Mac's git-annex repo. Hit this bug, installed latest git-annex from tarball and got past that and got the pairing done. Syncing happened, all looked well...
But when I look in the annex dir on that Linux machine, I now just see symlinks to the actual files in the repo's .git/annex stuff. It kinda works, but it's a bit distracting, especially if you open such a file in any desktop app and you can see it's got the target of the link (some sha-value filename.ext) rather than the sensibly-named link. Including files created and coped into that annex on that machine. (In Nautilus they all show with symlink & lock emblems.)
Look again at some documentation, and apparently it's supposed to do this
Which makes me wonder why it isn't doing it on the Mac I started the repository on?
Went to another mac (laptop) and installed git-annex, and set up pairing to the first mac - as far as I can tell, doing the exact same procedure as I did under Linux. TBH through the webapp there's not much scope for doing it a different way. Files sync across...
And there they are, the actual files, directly in the annex dir, not symlinks.
(I am by the way confirming this at the commandline, it's not just what Finder/Nautilus may be displaying to me graphically.)
Now, seeing the actual files in the annex directory is what I prefer; but I'm a: confused as to why the Macs are doing it that way but Linux isn't, and b: given the "how it works" link, why everything isn't using the links.
well, i did it using the webapp both times; i've barely scratched at the git-annex commandline so far.
However... I then tried to repeat it on another linux box (running ubuntu saucy and the version of git-annex in that repo) and it worked as expected: Real files in the annex directory, ie: as I understand it, direct mode.
So, went back to the first linux box (running ubuntu raring), and cleared everything off, quit and started again, doing the same thing again, and it did the direct mode thing itself this time.
Which I think leaves me with it the way I want it.
My only guess is, maybe it got set up in non-direct mode when I first started using the older git-annex in the raring repos, before failing with the bad comment in ssh public key bug, at which point I switched to the downloaded-today tarball and just tried to resume. Starting from scratch with the newer version worked.
I'm sure more questions to come later; am a Dropbox fugitive by way of ownCloud (won't-fix bug on version upgrades) basically trying to replicate that kind of convenience. But those are for other postings.