Currently for a special remote to support being configured with exporttree=no importtree=yes, it needs to implement the ImportActions interface, which uses ContentIdentifiers for safety and includes some methods that are only needed for exporttree=yes.

Few special remotes support that interface, and probably a lot of them just can't; they don't have something that can be used as a ContentIdentifier, or lack the necessary atomicity properties to implement it safely. (For example, storeExportWithContentIdentifier has a list of old ContentIdentifiers that are allowed to be overwritten, and requires that other content does not get overwritten.)

The external special remote protocol does not support that interface yet, due to its complexity and also because noone has requested it. (There is a draft protocol extension for export and import, see https://git-annex.branchable.com/design/external_special_remote_protocol/export_and_import_appendix/#index2h2) (See also add import tree to external special remote protocol)

A simpler interface that supoorts only importtree=yes without needing to worry about exporttree=yes, could let a lot more special remotes support tree import. (For example import tree from rsync special remote.)

Such a special remote could be populated in any way by something outside git-annex, and git annex import --from remote would download the content and generate a remote tracking branch. Once imported, other clones could use git annex get to download files from the special remote.

Bearing in mind that since something is writing to the special remote, any file on it could be overwritten at any point, so such a get may download the wrong content. (So the remote should have retrievalSecurityPolicy = RetrievalVerifiableKeysSecure to make downloads be verified well enough.)

I said this would not use a ContentIdentifier, but it seems it needs some simple form of ContentIdentifier, which could be just an mtime. Without any ContentIdentifier, it seems that each time git annex import --from remote is run, it would need to re-download all files from the remote, because it would have no way of knowing if it had seen a version of a file before. This ContentIdentifier would be used only to avoid re-downloading when importing. It would not be used by any other methods. It could even be a dummy value if re-downloading every file on import is acceptable.

What is needed in such an interface?

listImportableContents :: Annex (Maybe (ContentIdentifier, ImportableContents ByteSize))
-- Retrieves content from an import location to a file.
-- The content retrieved could be anything; it needs to be
-- strongly verified if this is used to download a particular Key
-- that was at one point stored on the remote, since the content
-- of the remote could change at any time.
-- (The MeterUpdate does not need to be used if 
    -- sequentially to the file.)
-- Throws exception on failure.
retrieveImport :: ImportLocation -> FilePath -> MeterUpdate -> Annex ()
-- Checks if anything is present on the remote at the specified
-- ImportLocation. It may check the size or other characteristics
    -- of the Key, but does not need to guarantee that the content on
    -- the remote is the same as the Key's content.
    -- Throws an exception if the remote cannot be accessed.
checkPresentImport :: Key -> ImportLocation -> Annex Bool

listImportableContents is unchanged, and checkPresentImport above is identical to checkPresentExport. retrieveImport is very similar to retrieveExport, except that the content retrieved is not guaranteed to be the same as the content of any key. Actually, it may be an identical interface; the only thing I can find that uses retrieveExport forces verification of the content retrived since it could have been changed by another writer.

The similarity with interface that we already have suggests that perhaps this does not need changes to Types.Remote to implement. It could be done as a Remote.Helper.SimpleImport that takes those 3 methods and translates them to the current interface. Or by complicating Remote.Helper.ExportImport further.. --Joey