I would like to get available the access to the annex of my repository as remote with rsync protocol (read only). The idea is not to have a redundant copy of the annex but to add an other option to connect to the annex.
If I create an rsync remote I obtain something like
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001 -- web<br/>
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002 -- bit torrent
044cf7ac-d2b1-4f84-8bbc-747ac4659c8f -- rsync
a0e14705-ef07-4b8a-9a00-8724fd936a91 -- origin /my-repo/.git/annex
The remote "rsync" points to the same location of the annex /my-repo/.git/annex
If I add a file
git annex add file1
and then I check where it is available
git annex whereis file 1
I obtain that it is not available on 'rsync'
Therefore if someone has a copy of the repository, without access to the origin annex, there is no way to use the additional access through 'rsync'
What is the right way to configure the 'rsync' remote in such a way behave like an alias for the origin annex?
Creating a separate special remote pointing to the same content is not a good idea. This will confuse git-annex's location tracking, and in some cases can lead to data loss, since git-annex will assume it can safely delete a file from one of the "two" repositories, since it thinks the "other" one will still have the content of the file.
Instead, you need a way to configure a regular git remote, pointing at the repository, that is read-only, or is accessed over rsync, or whatever your requirements are.