NAME
git-annex unused - look for unused file content
SYNOPSIS
git annex unused
DESCRIPTION
Checks the annex for data that does not correspond to any files present in any tag or branch, or in the git index, and prints a numbered list of the data.
After running this command, you can use the --unused
option with many
other git-annex commands to operate on all the unused data that was found.
For example, to move all unused data to origin:
git annex unused; git annex move --unused --to origin
OPTIONS
--fast
Only show unused temp and bad files.
--from=repository
Check for unused data that is located in a repository.
The repository should be specified using the name of a configured remote, or the UUID or description of a repository.
--used-refspec=+ref:-ref
By default, any data that the git index uses, or that any refs in the git repository point to is considered to be used. If you only want to use some refs, you can use this option to specify the ones to use. Data that is not in the specified refs (and not used by the index) will then be considered unused.
See REFSPEC FORMAT below for details of the format of this setting.
The git configuration annex.used-refspec can be used to configure this in a more permanent fashion.
--json
Enable JSON output. This is intended to be parsed by programs that use git-annex.
--json-error-messages
Messages that would normally be output to standard error are included in the JSON instead.
Also the git-annex-common-options(1) can be used.
REFSPEC FORMAT
The refspec format for --used-refspec and annex.used-refspec is a colon-separated list of additions and removals of refs. A somewhat contrived example:
+refs/heads/*:+HEAD^:+refs/tags/*:-refs/tags/old-tag:reflog
This adds all refs/heads/ refs, as well as the previous version of HEAD. It also adds all tags, except for old-tag. And it adds all refs from the reflog.
The default behavior is equivilant to --used-refspec=+refs/*:+HEAD
The refspec is processed by starting with an empty set of refs, and walking the list in order from left to right.
Each + using a glob is matched against all relevant refs
(a subset of git show-ref
) and all matching refs are added
to the set.
For example, "+refs/remotes/*" adds all remote refs.
Each + without a glob adds the literal value to the set. For example, "+HEAD^" adds "HEAD^".
Each - is matched against the set of refs accumulated so far. Any refs with names that match are removed from the set.
"reflog" adds all the refs from the reflog. This will make past versions of files not be considered to be unused until the ref expires from the reflog (by default for 90 days). Note that this may make git-annex unused take some time to complete, it if needs to check every ref from the reflog.
SEE ALSO
git-annex(1)
AUTHOR
Joey Hess id@joeyh.name
Warning: Automatically converted into a man page by mdwn2man. Edit with care.
@mark The
--from
option can be used with any remote, whether it's a normal git remote or a special remote.Well, this only finds old versions of files, it does not delete them.
Even if you choose to then run git-annex-dropunused, it won't lose data unless you force it to.
I recently migrated an annex to SHA256 (without "E") and I'm now trying to clean the repo from unused data. I have a strange situation: there are 62G of unused objects:
but 'git annex unused' gives me only:
I've checked (through a small shell script) that none of the object is in fact referenced by any symlink...
May I delete them? Shall I do some other checking/fscking/repairing?
Thank you
"May I delete them" --
git-annex-drop --force
may be safer, as it also updates location tracking. You might also want to git-annex-dead the dropped keys to prevent git-annex-fsck from complaining about lost contents.Re: why git-annex-unused isn't finding the unused contents, try running it with
--used-refspec=+HEAD
, and make sureannex.used-refspec
git config is not set. Note that this will mark as unused any annexed contents not referenced from the latest tree of the HEAD branch, e.g. annexed files that were removed in some older commit.--from=repository
is used), so if you dropped everything inhere
, there's nothing to find. But it seems fromdu
results that contents wasn't actually dropped? git-annex-whereis tells where git-annex thinks contents is.Generally if git-annex unused does not identify some object as unused, that you expected would be unused, it's because it found a branch that still uses that object. It might be some old branch (or tag) that you made and forgot about, it might be a remote tracking branch, either for a remote that you forgot to sync the changes to, or for an old remote that got removed but in a way that left the tracking branch around. annex.used-refspec can also pull in other, non-branch refs.
@meribold there is not, but I've opened a todo, git-annex-unused --history