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git-annex 10.20230321 released with these changes

  • Using git-annex view in an adjusted branch, or git-annex adjust in a view branch, will enter an adjusted view branch.
  • sync: Fix a reversion that prevented sending files to exporttree=yes remotes when annex-tracking-branch was configured to branch:subdir (Introduced in version 10.20230214)
  • status: This command is deprecated because it was only needed in direct mode; git status --short is very similar.
  • Windows: Support long filenames in more (possibly all) of the code.
  • Added arm64 build for ancient kernels, needed to support Android phones whose kernels are too old to support kernels used by the current arm64 build.
  • importfeed: Display feed title.
  • init: Support being ran in a repository that has a newline in its path.
  • copy: When --from and --to are combined and the content is already present on the destination remote, update location tracking as necessary.
  • Fixed spelling of some messages and added a .codespellrc Thanks, Yaroslav Halchenko
Posted Tue Mar 21 20:14:23 2023

git-annex 10.20230227 released with these changes

  • Fix more breakage caused by git's fix for CVE-2022-24765, this time involving a remote that is a local bare repository not owned by the current user.
  • info: Fix reversion in last release involving handling of unsupported input by continuing to handle any other inputs, before exiting nonzero at the end.
  • git-annex.cabal: Move webapp build deps under the Assistant build flag so git-annex can be built again without yesod etc installed.
  • Improve error message when unable to read a sqlite database due to permissions problem.
Posted Mon Feb 27 16:24:06 2023

git-annex 10.20230214 released with these changes

  • sync: Fix a bug that caused files to be removed from an importtree=yes exporttree=yes special remote when the remote's annex-tracking-branch was not the currently checked out branch.
  • S3: Support a region= configuration useful for some non-Amazon S3 implementations. This feature needs git-annex to be built with aws-0.24.
  • view: New field?=glob and ?tag syntax that includes a directory "_" in the view for files that do not have the specified metadata set.
  • Added annex.viewunsetdirectory git config to change the name of the "_" directory in a view.
  • Changed the name of view branches to include the parent branch. Existing view branches checked out using an old name will still work.
  • sync: Avoid pushing view branches to remotes.
  • sync: When run in a view branch, refresh the view branch to reflect any changes that have been made to the parent branch or metadata.
  • sync: When run in a view branch, avoid updating synced/ branches, or trying to merge anything from remotes.
  • Support http urls that contain ":" that is not followed by a port number, the same as git does.
  • sync: Warn when the adjusted basis ref cannot be found, as happens eg when the user has renamed branches.
  • Sped up view branch construction by 50%.
  • info, enableremotemote, renameremote: Avoid a confusing message when more than one repository matches the user provided name.
  • info: Exit nonzero when the input is not supported.
Posted Tue Feb 14 18:09:27 2023

git-annex 10.20230126 released with these changes

  • Change --metadata comparisons < > <= and >= to fall back to lexicographical comparisons when one or both values being compared are not numbers.
  • Improve handling of some .git/annex/ subdirectories being on other filesystems, in the bittorrent special remote, and youtube-dl integration, and git-annex addurl.
  • Added --anything (and --nothing). Eg, git-annex find --anything will list all annexed files whether or not the content is present. This is slightly faster and clearer than --include= or --exclude=
  • Speed up git-annex upgrade (from v5) and init in a repository that has submodules.
  • Added libgcc_s.so.1 to the linux standalone build so pthread_cancel will work.
  • Speed up initial scanning for annexed files when built with persistent-2.14.4.1
  • Allow initremote of additional special remotes with type=web, in addition to the default web special remote. When --sameas=web is used, these provide additional names for the web special remote, and may also have their own additional configuration and cost.
  • web: Add urlinclude and urlexclude configuration settings.
  • Added an optional cost= configuration to all special remotes.
  • adb: Support the remote.name.cost and remote.name.cost-command configs.
  • findkeys: New command, very similar to git-annex find but operating on keys.
  • move, copy: Support combining --from and --to, which will send content from one remote across to another remote.
Posted Thu Jan 26 19:27:46 2023

git-annex 10.20221212 released with these changes

  • Fix a hang that occasionally occurred during commands such as move, when operating on unlocked files. (A bug introduced in 10.20220927)
  • When youtube-dl is not available in PATH, use yt-dlp instead.
  • Support parsing yt-dpl output to display download progress.
  • init: Avoid scanning for annexed files, which can be lengthy in a large repository. Instead that scan is done on demand.
  • Sped up the initial scan for annexed files by 21%.
  • test: Add --test-debug option.
  • Support quettabyte and yottabyte.
Posted Mon Dec 12 16:52:24 2022

Similar to the yearly git user survey, there is a 2018 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer the questions!

Since git-annex is seeing increasing use to manage scientific data, the survey also includes some extra questions about that at the end.

Posted Sat Dec 1 15:46:38 2018

git-annex 6.20180626 is an important security fix release.

See the advisory for details about the security holes fixed in this release.

After upgrading git-annex, you should restart any git-annex assistant processes.

Several changes to git-annex's behavior had to be made as part of the security fixes:

  • A security fix has changed git-annex to refuse to download content from some special remotes when the content cannot be verified with a hash check. In particular URL and WORM keys stored on such remotes won't be downloaded. See the documentation of the annex.security.allow-unverified-downloads configuration for how to deal with this if it affects your files.

  • A security fix has changed git-annex to only support http, https, and ftp URL schemes by default. You can enable other URL schemes, at your own risk, using annex.security.allowed-url-schemes.

  • A related security fix prevents git-annex from connecting to http servers (and proxies) on localhost or private networks. This can be overridden, at your own risk, using annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses.

  • Setting annex.web-options no longer is enough to make curl be used, and youtube-dl is also no longer used by default. See the documentation of annex.security.allowed-http-addresses for details and how to enable them.

  • The annex.web-download-command configuration has been removed, use annex.web-options instead.

Posted Tue Jun 26 16:00:19 2018

Similar to the yearly git user survey, there is a 2015 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer the questions!

Posted Mon Oct 19 20:05:12 2015

Similar to the yearly git user survey, I am doing a 2013 git-annex user survey.

If you use git-annex, please take a few minutes to answer my questions!

Posted Fri Nov 22 17:17:21 2013

Thanks to my recent successful git-annex crowdfunding campaign, $1000 has been set aside to award others for their contributions to git-annex by the end of 2013. This is not a lot of money, but I hope that the reward and recognition will encourage some more people to work on git-annex.

You don't need to know Haskell! You could contribute some interesting and useful special remote hooks, or write better documentation.

On the other hand, if you have learned Haskell, this might be your first chance to make some money with it! Some ideas for things to work on that would be particularly award-worthy:

  • Port git-annex to IOS, using ghc-ios. I don't plan to ever do this myself, but you could make it happen.
  • Get the git-annex assistant working in Windows, building on the existing port to Windows. Otherwise, this is on my roadmap for February.
  • Solve existing bugs or todo items. There are more than I can keep up with.

The amount of the awards will vary depending on the size of the contribution. Since this is getting started later than is ideal, I reserve the right to extend it past the end of the year if I don't get enough participants.

If you'd like to participate in this program, just email me at id@joeyh.name. --Joey

Posted Thu Oct 10 22:02:33 2013

git-annex will be briefly presented at FOSDEM, on Sunday February 4th at 15:40. Details.

Thanks to Richard Hartmann for making this presentation.

Posted Sat Feb 4 18:30:28 2012

Christophe-Marie Duquesne has just announced Sharebox, a FUSE filesystem relying on git-annex:

What are your goals?  
Seamless synchronization "à la dropbox".  
Ability to use with big binary files such as mp3/movies.  
Entirely decentralized.  
Don't use unnecessary space  
Keep it simple: avoid special VCS commands and keep a filesystem  
interface as much as possible.

While still alpha, this is promising. --Joey

Posted Thu Mar 31 18:06:14 2011

Linux Weekly News has a nice article on git-annex in it this week.

Posted Thu Dec 9 15:35:07 2010