Hi,
I've recently set-up a server which uses Southpaw's Tactic DAM system and I've initialised a git-annex directory using the assistant which will manage any files which Tactic puts into the git-annex. I plan to make some remote repositories to Amazon S3, friends and some local machines on my home network. The server is running Ubuntu 64-bit and so I've written an upstart job which runs 'git-annex assistant --autostart' as the user 'git-annex' as this user doesn't log-in and run the xdg autostart .desktop at all.
I saw that you can set the purpose of each repository which it will sync to and noticed 'Manual Mode.' From the description, it seems it will only work if I do explicit git-annex commands to it which would be perfect for me as I'd like to write tools which run git-annex add/get/drop/etc. manually on some remotes like ones to friends as I don't want them to sync to everything or any files that they produce, only files which they request with a special tool that I'll write and have Tactic marshal the file changes/names/etc.
I've set those remotes to manual-mode via the assistant and tried copying a file to the remote's directory, but it auto-synced the file anyway. Maybe I'm getting confused at how manual mode works but I'd like to only explicitly set which files to add to the repo by a command and not just 'any' file which gets placed into that directory. If this is more of a wishlist request I guess just move this post into there and I'll reword it as a wish request.
I don't need to use the assistant if that makes more sense, but I would like to be able to still monitor things as the webapp makes for a great GUI to check for that stuff. I can't wait for the https version of webapp too, I currently run git-annex webapp --listen=: and then run the link it outputs on my desktop machine to manage it from the server.
Thanks, and this is such a great bit of software, especially as my Internet connection is really bad for 2013 standards, and having the option for friends/remote servers to sync up via an encrypted S3 or box.com account is great!
In the assistant, putting a repository in manual mode prevents the assistant from automatically downloading every file that is added to other clones of the repository. As you've noticed, it does not prevent the assistant from automatically adding new files that are put into the local repository, or from uploading those files to other clients that want them (ie, clients not themselves set to use manual mode).
You can prevent the assistant from noticing when you add new files to a repository by clicking on "syncing enabled" in the first repository in the list. (The repository labeled as "here".) You can then
git annex add
the files you want to add by hand, and manuallycopy annex copy
them to other repositories, and manuallygit annex sync
.