there's a lot of good documentation on this wiki, but it's hard to find sometimes. it's also unclear if we should look in the git-annex manpage or elsewhere in the wiki or where. this is a typical problem with the use of wikis for documentation: it's there, but hard to find. it doesn't mean a wiki shouldn't be used but, as with any user manual, special care needs to be taken about structure, organisation and making sure the manual is exhaustive.

a good example of this problem is document standard groups more extensively in the UI. --anarcat

update: a beginning of this may be the the workflow page but it lacks a lot of details...

So we have those entry points so far:

  • git-annex - the manpage
  • walkthrough - "A walkthrough of some of the basic features of git-annex, using the command line", described as "only one possible workflow for using git-annex"
  • assistant - a whole subtree of pages describing the assistant, includes a quickstart - introduction to the assistant with a series of screenshots, described in walkthrough as "If you don't want to use the command line, see quickstart instead.", linked from the assistant page
  • workflow - a summary of the different workflows that git-annex can use
  • special remotes - a good list of "supported backends", which may be a better wording
  • inversely, not is what is not supported, obviously
  • install - how to install git-annex, of course
  • tips - a mish-mash list of "how to do X in git-annex", 68 pages at the time of writing
  • there's the "details" section on the frontpage which covers lots of the internals, design and so on
  • there are also what i consider to be "leaf" pages like how it works or sync there

So it seems the fundamentals of such a user guide are there. It's just a matter of grouping this in a meaningful way.

I am thinking the following structure may be a good basis: