Is there a way to store a file in an annex repo without the assistant trying to commit it? My particular issue is that git annex watch tries to add my .thunderbird folder, and I don't want it in annex. Is that a supported use case?
Also, for my better understanding, does watch keep track of what files it saw last time and only look for new things on startup? Or does it try to commit anything that's not already in git (whether symlink or not)?
wow, are you git annexing your whole home directory? that sounds extreme and problematic, since everything in git annex becomes read-only!!
This how to make git annex ignore something though: make git ignore it in the first place.
Stop the git assistant if it's running.
create a file called ".gitignore" in the root of your annex directory; add a line to that file for everything you want git (and therefore git annex) to ignore, e.g. ".thunderbird"
e.g.:
check that file into git:
Now you should be able to start up git-annex again and have it ignore .thunderbird, or any other path you put in .gitignore
AFAIK, the assistant does not currently honor .gitgnore completely. There are parts of it that do, and places where running git commands to check .gitignore would be very expensive, and so I've TODOed it for later, as I'll need to write my own .gitignore parser.
So, use caution..