git-annex addurl --fast/--relaxed --verifiable now uses VURL keys,
which is an improvement over the old, un-verifiable URL keys. But users
have to know to use it, and can have URL keys in their repository.
Note that old git-annex, when in a repo with VURL keys, is still able to operate on them fine, even though it doesn't know what they are. Only fsck warns about them. So --verifiable could become the default reasonably soon. It's not necessary to wait for everyone to have the new version of git-annex.
It might be good to nudge users to migrate their existing files to VURL eventually. Could be a fsck warning about URL keys, at some point after --verifiable becomes the default for addurl. Or could be a warning when transferring the content between repositories that it's not possible to verify it.
This would need a way to migrate from URL key to VURL key.
Oh, I was wrong, that does exist already, just
git-annex migrate --backend=VURLworks for URL keys. (Content must be present of course or no migration is done). --Joey
Of course if users want to continue to use their existing URL keys and not be able to verify content, that's fine. Users can also choose to use WORM keys if they really want to.
However, I don't think there's enough reason to want to use URL keys to add configuration of which kind of keys addurl uses, once VURL is the default. --Joey
One way this might cause trouble is that current
git-annex registerurlandunregisterurl(andfromkey) when passed an url rather than a key, generates an URL key. If that is changed to generate a VURL key, then it might break some workflow, particularly one where an url was registered as an URL key and is now being unregistered.Also
git-annex registerurl, if it generated a VURL key, would not be able to register an equivilant key for that VURL key, because it does not have the content of the url available. This leads me to think that it's not possible to have registerurl usefully support generating VURL keys. (Registering one without an equivilant key would make no hash verification be done, so no better than an URL key.)But, I don't think that registerurl/unregisterurl continuing to generate URL keys is a big problem, it should not block making VURL the default in places where it can be default. --Joey
I think that is no longer a blocker for this becoming default, it no longer causes a verification failure, instead the content originating with such a special remote for a VURL is effectively treated the same as for an URL, and just doesn't get verified in transit later on.