In both the .git/annex directory and the git-annex branch, two levels of hash directories are used, to avoid issues with too many files in one directory.

Two separate hash methods are used.

• hashdirmixed is only used for non-bare git repositories. (We'd like to stop using this, but it'd be too annoying to change all the git-annex symlinks!)

• hashdirlower is used for bare git repositories, the git-annex branch, and on special remotes as well.

Note that git annex find and git annex examinekey can be used with the --format option to find the hash directories. The explanation below is only for completeness.

new hash format

This uses two directories, each with a three-letter name, such as "f87/4d5"

The directory names come from the first 6 characters of the md5sum of the key when serialized as a hex string.

For example:

echo -n "SHA256E-s0--e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855" | md5sum

old hash format

This uses two directories, each with a two-letter name, such as "pX/1J"

It takes the md5sum of the key, but rather than a string, represents it as 4 32bit words. Only the first word is used. It is converted into a string by the same mechanism that would be used to encode a normal md5sum value into a string, but where that would normally encode the bits using the 16 characters 0-9a-f, this instead uses the 32 characters "0123456789zqjxkmvwgpfZQJXKMVWGPF". The first 2 letters of the resulting string are the first directory, and the second 2 are the second directory.

chunk keys

The same hash directory is used for a chunk key as would be used for the key that it's a chunk of.