git-annex - manage files with git, without checking their contents
in
git annex command [params ...]
git-annex allows managing files with git, without checking the
file contents into git. While that may seem paradoxical, it is useful when
dealing with files larger than git can currently easily handle, whether due
to limitations in memory, checksumming time, or disk space.
Even without file content tracking, being able to manage files
with git, move files around and delete files with versioned directory trees,
and use branches and distributed clones, are all very handy reasons to use
git. And annexed files can co-exist in the same git repository with
regularly versioned files, which is convenient for maintaining documents,
Makefiles, etc that are associated with annexed files but that benefit from
full revision control.
When a file is annexed, its content is moved into a key-value
store, and a symlink is made that points to the content. These symlinks are
checked into git and versioned like regular files. You can move them around,
delete them, and so on. Pushing to another git repository will make
git-annex there aware of the annexed file, and it can be used to retrieve
its content from the key-value store.
# git annex get video/hackity_hack_and_kaxxt.mov
get video/hackity_hack_and_kaxxt.mov (not available)
I was unable to access these remotes: server
Try making some of these repositories available:
5863d8c0-d9a9-11df-adb2-af51e6559a49 -- my home file server
58d84e8a-d9ae-11df-a1aa-ab9aa8c00826 -- portable USB drive
ca20064c-dbb5-11df-b2fe-002170d25c55 -- backup SATA drive
failed
# sudo mount /media/usb
# git remote add usbdrive /media/usb
# git annex get video/hackity_hack_and_kaxxt.mov
get video/hackity_hack_and_kaxxt.mov (from usbdrive...) ok
# git annex add iso
add iso/Debian_5.0.iso ok
# git annex drop iso/Debian_4.0.iso
drop iso/Debian_4.0.iso ok
# git annex move iso --to=usbdrive
move iso/Debian_5.0.iso (moving to usbdrive...) ok
- test
- This runs git-annex's built-in test suite.
- See git-annex-test(1) for details.
- testremote
remote
- This tests a remote by generating some random objects and sending them to
the remote, then redownloading them, removing them from the remote,
etc.
- It's safe to run in an existing repository (the repository contents are
not altered), although it may perform expensive data transfers.
- See git-annex-testremote(1) for details.
- fuzztest
- Generates random changes to files in the current repository, for use in
testing the assistant.
- See git-annex-fuzztest(1) for details.
- benchmark
- This runs git-annex's built-in benchmarks, if it was built with
benchmarking support.
- See git-annex-benchmark(1) for details.
In addition to all the commands listed above, more commands can be
added to git-annex by dropping commands named like "git-annex-foo"
into a directory in the PATH.
Like other git commands, git-annex is configured via
.git/config. These settings, as well as relevant git config settings,
are the ones git-annex uses.
(Some of these settings can also be set, across all clones of the
repository, using git-annex-config. See its man page for a list.)
- annex.uuid
- A unique UUID for this repository (automatically set).
- annex.backend
- Name of the default key-value backend to use when adding new files to the
repository. See git-annex-backends(1) for information about available
backends.
- This is overridden by annex annex.backend configuration in the
.gitattributes files, and by the --backend option.
- (This used to be named annex.backends, and that will still be used
if set.)
- annex.securehashesonly
- Set to true to indicate that the repository should only use
cryptographically secure hashes (SHA2, SHA3) and not insecure hashes (MD5,
SHA1) for content.
- When this is set, the contents of files using cryptographically insecure
hashes will not be allowed to be added to the repository.
- Also, git-annex fsck will complain about any files present in the
repository that use insecure hashes. And, git-annex import
--no-content will refuse to import files from special remotes using
insecure hashes.
- To configure the behavior in new clones of the repository, this can be set
using git-annex-config.
- annex.maxextensionlength
- Maximum length, in bytes, of what is considered a filename extension when
adding a file to a backend that preserves filename extensions. The default
length is 4, which allows extensions like "jpeg". The dot before
the extension is not counted part of its length. At most two extensions at
the end of a filename will be preserved, e.g. .gz or .tar.gz .
- annex.diskreserve
- Amount of disk space to reserve. Disk space is checked when transferring
annexed content to avoid running out, and additional free space can be
reserved via this option, to make space for other data (such as git commit
logs). Can be specified with any commonly used units, for example,
"0.5 gb", "500M", or "100 KiloBytes"
- The default reserve is 100 megabytes.
- annex.skipunknown
- Set to true to make commands like "git-annex get" silently skip
over items that are listed in the command line, but are not checked into
git.
- Set to false to make it an error for commands like "git-annex
get" to be asked to operate on files that are not checked into git.
(This is the default in recent versions of git-annex.)
- Note that, when annex.skipunknown is false, a command like "git-annex
get ." will fail if no files in the current directory are checked
into git, but a command like "git-annex get" will not fail,
because the current directory is not listed, but is implicit. Commands
like "git-annex get foo/" will fail if no files in the directory
are checked into git, but if at least one file is, it will ignore other
files that are not. This is all the same as the behavior of "git-ls
files --error-unmatch".
- Also note that git-annex skips files that are checked into git, but are
not annexed files, this setting does not affect that.
- annex.largefiles
- Used to configure which files are large enough to be added to the annex.
It is an expression that matches the large files, eg
"include=*.mp3 or largerthan=500kb" See
git-annex-matching-expression(1) for details on the syntax.
- Overrides any annex.largefiles attributes in .gitattributes
files.
- To configure a default annex.largefiles for all clones of the repository,
this can be set in git-annex-config(1).
- This configures the behavior of both git-annex and git when adding files
to the repository. By default, git-annex add adds all files to the
annex (except dotfiles), and git add adds files to git (unless they
were added to the annex previously). When annex.largefiles is configured,
both git annex add and git add will add matching large files
to the annex, and the other files to git.
- Other git-annex commands also honor annex.largefiles, including git
annex import, git annex addurl, git annex importfeed and
the assistant.
- annex.dotfiles
- Normally, dotfiles are assumed to be files like .gitignore, whose content
should always be part of the git repository, so they will not be added to
the annex. Setting annex.dotfiles to true makes dotfiles be added to the
annex the same as any other file.
- To annex only some dotfiles, set this and configure annex.largefiles to
match the ones you want. For example, to match only dotfiles ending in
".big"
-
git config annex.largefiles "(include=.*.big or include=*/.*.big) or
(exclude=.* and exclude=*/.*)"
git config annex.dotfiles true
- To configure a default annex.dotfiles for all clones of the repository,
this can be set in git-annex-config(1).
- annex.gitaddtoannex
- Setting this to false will prevent git add from adding files to the
annex, despite the annex.largefiles configuration.
- annex.addsmallfiles
- Controls whether small files (not matching annex.largefiles) should be
checked into git by git annex add. Defaults to true; set to false
to instead make small files be skipped.
- annex.addunlocked
- Commands like git-annex add default to adding files to the
repository in locked form. This can make them add the files in unlocked
form, the same as if git-annex-unlock(1) were run on the files.
- This can be set to "true" to add everything unlocked, or it can
be a more complicated expression that matches files by name, size, or
content. See git-annex-matching-expression(1) for details.
- To configure a default annex.addunlocked for all clones of the repository,
this can be set in git-annex-config(1).
- (Using git add always adds files in unlocked form and it is not
affected by this setting.)
- When a repository has core.symlinks set to false, or has an adjusted
unlocked branch checked out, this setting is ignored, and files are always
added to the repository in unlocked form.
- annex.numcopies
- This is a deprecated setting. You should instead use the git annex
numcopies command to configure how many copies of files are kept
across all repositories, or the annex.numcopies .gitattributes
setting.
- This config setting is only looked at when git annex numcopies has
never been configured, and when there's no annex.numcopies setting in the
.gitattributes file.
- annex.genmetadata
- Set this to true to make git-annex automatically generate some
metadata when adding files to the repository.
- In particular, it stores year, month, and day metadata, from the file's
modification date.
- When importfeed is used, it stores additional metadata from the feed, such
as the author, title, etc.
- annex.used-refspec
- This controls which refs git-annex unused considers to be used. See
REFSPEC FORMAT in git-annex-unused(1) for details.
- annex.jobs
- Configure the number of concurrent jobs to run. Default is 1.
- Only git-annex commands that support the --jobs option will use this.
- Setting this to "cpus" will run one job per CPU core.
- When the --batch option is used, this configuration is
ignored.
- annex.adjustedbranchrefresh
- When git-annex-adjust(1) is used to set up an adjusted branch that needs
to be refreshed after getting or dropping files, this config controls how
frequently the branch is refreshed.
- Refreshing the branch takes some time, so doing it after every file can be
too slow. (It also can generate a lot of dangling git objects.) The
default value is 0 (or false), which does not refresh the branch. Setting
1 (or true) will refresh only once, after git-annex has made other
changes. Setting 2 refreshes after every file, 3 after every other file,
and so on; setting 100 refreshes after every 99 files.
- (If git-annex gets faster in the future, refresh rates will increase
proportional to the speed improvements.)
- annex.queuesize
- git-annex builds a queue of git commands, in order to combine similar
commands for speed. By default the size of the queue is limited to 10240
commands; this can be used to change the size. If you have plenty of
memory and are working with very large numbers of files, increasing the
queue size can speed it up.
- annex.bloomcapacity
- The git annex unused and git annex sync --content commands
use a bloom filter to determine what files are present in eg, the work
tree. The default bloom filter is sized to handle up to 500000 files. If
your repository is larger than that, you should increase this value.
Larger values will make git-annex unused and git annex sync
--content consume more memory; run git annex info for memory
usage numbers.
- annex.bloomaccuracy
- Adjusts the accuracy of the bloom filter used by git annex unused
and git annex sync --content. The default accuracy is 10000000 -- 1
unused file out of 10000000 will be missed by git annex unused.
Increasing the accuracy will make git annex unused consume more
memory; run git annex info for memory usage numbers.
- annex.sshcaching
- By default, git-annex caches ssh connections using ssh's ControlMaster and
ControlPersist settings (if built using a new enough ssh). To disable
this, set to false.
- annex.adviceNoSshCaching
- When git-annex is unable to use ssh connection caching, or has been
configured not to, and concurrency is enabled, it will warn that this
might result in multiple ssh processes prompting for passwords at the same
time. To disable that warning, eg if you have configured ssh connection
caching yourself, or have ssh agent caching passwords, set this to
false.
- annex.alwayscommit
- By default, git-annex automatically commits data to the git-annex branch
after each command is run. If you have a series of commands that you want
to make a single commit, you can run the commands with -c
annex.alwayscommit=false. You can later commit the data by running
git annex merge (or by automatic merges) or git annex
sync.
- annex.commitmessage
- When git-annex updates the git-annex branch, it usually makes up its own
commit message (eg "update"), since users rarely look at or care
about changes to that branch. If you do care, you can specify this setting
by running commands with -c annex.commitmessage=whatever
- This works well in combination with annex.alwayscommit=false, to gather up
a set of changes and commit them with a message you specify.
- annex.alwayscompact
- By default, git-annex compacts data it records in the git-annex branch.
Setting this to false avoids doing that compaction in some cases, which
can speed up operations that populate the git-annex branch with a lot of
data. However, when used with operations that overwrite old values in the
git-annex branch, that may cause the git-annex branch to use more disk
space, and so slow down reading data from it.
- An example of a command that can be sped up by using -c
annex.alwayscompact=false is git-annex registerurl --batch,
when adding a large number of urls to the same key.
- This option was first supported by git-annex version 10.20220724. It is
not entirely safe to set this option in a repository that may also be used
by an older version of git-annex at the same time as a version that
supports this option.
- annex.allowsign
- By default git-annex avoids gpg signing commits that it makes when they're
not the purpose of a command, but only a side effect. That default avoids
lots of gpg password prompts when commit.gpgSign is set. A command like
git annex sync or git annex merge will gpg sign its commit,
but a command like git annex get, that updates the git-annex
branch, will not. The assistant also avoids signing commits.
- Setting annex.allowsign to true lets all commits be signed, as controlled
by commit.gpgSign and other git configuration.
- annex.merge-annex-branches
- By default, git-annex branches that have been pulled from remotes are
automatically merged into the local git-annex branch, so that git-annex
has the most up-to-date possible knowledge.
- To avoid that merging, set this to "false".
- This can be useful particularly when you don't have write permission to
the repository. While git-annex is mostly able to work in a read-only
repository with unmerged git-annex branches, some things do not work, and
when it does work it will be slower due to needing to look at each of the
unmerged branches.
- annex.private
- When this is set to true, no information about the repository will be
recorded in the git-annex branch.
- For example, to make a repository without any mention of it ever appearing
in the git-annex branch:
-
git init myprivate
cd myprivaterepo
git config annex.private true
git annex init
- annex.hardlink
- Set this to true to make file contents be hard linked between the
repository and its remotes when possible, instead of a more expensive
copy.
- Use with caution -- This can invalidate numcopies counting, since with
hard links, fewer copies of a file can exist. So, it is a good idea to
mark a repository using this setting as untrusted.
- When a repository is set up using git clone --shared, git-annex
init will automatically set annex.hardlink and mark the repository as
untrusted.
- When annex.thin is also set, setting annex.hardlink has no
effect.
- annex.thin
- Set this to true to make unlocked files be a hard link to their
content in the annex, rather than a second copy. This can save
considerable disk space, but when a modification is made to a file, you
will lose the local (and possibly only) copy of the old version. So,
enable with care.
- After setting (or unsetting) this, you should run git annex fix to
fix up the annexed files in the work tree to be hard links (or
copies).
- Note that this has no effect when the filesystem does not support hard
links. And when multiple files in the work tree have the same content,
only one of them gets hard linked to the annex.
- annex.supportunlocked
- By default git-annex supports unlocked files as well as locked files, so
this defaults to true. If set to false, git-annex will only support locked
files. That will avoid doing the work needed to support unlocked
files.
- Note that setting this to false does not prevent a repository from having
unlocked files added to it, and in that case the content of the files will
not be accessible until they are locked.
- After changing this config, you need to re-run git-annex init for
it to take effect.
- annex.resolvemerge
- Set to false to prevent merge conflicts in the checked out branch being
automatically resolved by the git-annex assitant, git-annex sync,
git-annex merge, and the git-annex post-receive hook.
- To configure the behavior in all clones of the repository, this can be set
in git-annex-config(1).
- annex.synccontent
- Set to true to make git-annex sync default to syncing annexed
content.
- To configure the behavior in all clones of the repository, this can be set
in git-annex-config(1).
- annex.synconlyannex
- Set to true to make git-annex sync default to only sincing the git-annex
branch and annexed content.
- To configure the behavior in all clones of the repository, this can be set
in git-annex-config(1).
- annex.debug
- Set to true to enable debug logging by default.
- annex.debugfilter
- Set to configure which debug messages to display (when debug message
display has been enabled by annex.debug or --debug). The value is one or
more module names, separated by commas.
- annex.version
- The current version of the git-annex repository. This is maintained by
git-annex and should never be manually changed.
- annex.autoupgraderepository
- When an old git-annex repository version is no longer supported, git-annex
will normally automatically upgrade the repository to the new version. It
may also sometimes upgrade from an old repository version that is still
supported but that is not as good as a later version.
- If this is set to false, git-annex won't automatically upgrade the
repository. If the repository version is not supported, git-annex will
instead exit with an error message. If it is still supported, git-annex
will continue to work.
- You can run git annex upgrade yourself when you are ready to
upgrade the repository.
- annex.crippledfilesystem
- Set to true if the repository is on a crippled filesystem, such as FAT,
which does not support symbolic links, or hard links, or unix permissions.
This is automatically probed by "git annex init".
- annex.pidlock
- Normally, git-annex uses fine-grained lock files to allow multiple
processes to run concurrently without getting in each others' way. That
works great, unless you are using git-annex on a filesystem that does not
support POSIX fcntl locks. This is sometimes the case when using NFS or
Lustre filesystems.
- To support such situations, you can set annex.pidlock to true, and it will
fall back to a single top-level pid file lock.
- Although, often, you'd really be better off fixing your networked
filesystem configuration to support POSIX locks.. And, some networked
filesystems are so inconsistent that one node can't reliably tell when the
other node is holding a pid lock. Caveat emptor.
- annex.pidlocktimeout
- git-annex will wait up to this many seconds for the pid lock file to go
away, and will then abort if it cannot continue. Default: 300
- When using pid lock files, it's possible for a stale lock file to get left
behind by previous run of git-annex that crashed or was interrupted. This
is mostly avoided, but can occur especially when using a network file
system. This timeout prevents git-annex waiting forever in such a
situation.
- annex.dbdir
- The directory where git-annex should store its sqlite databases. The
default location is inside .git/annex/.
- Certian filesystems, such as cifs, may not support locking operations that
sqlite needs, and setting this to a directory on another filesystem can
work around such a problem.
- This can safely be set to the same directory in the configuration of
multiple repositories; each repository will use a subdirectory for its
sqlite database.
- annex.cachecreds
- When "true" (the default), git-annex will cache credentials used
to access special remotes in files in .git/annex/creds/ that only you can
read. To disable that caching, set to "false", and credentials
will only be read from the environment, or if they have been embedded in
encrypted form in the git repository, will be extracted and decrypted each
time git-annex needs to access the remote.
- annex.secure-erase-command
- This can be set to a command that should be run whenever git-annex removes
the content of a file from the repository.
- In the command line, %file is replaced with the file that should be
erased.
- For example, to use the wipe command, set it to wipe -f %file.
- annex.freezecontent-command,
annex.thawcontent-command
- Usually the write permission bits are unset to protect annexed objects
from being modified or deleted. The freezecontent-command is run after
git-annex has removed (or attempted to remove) the write bit, and can be
used to prevent writing in some other way. The thawcontent-command should
undo its effect, and is run before git-annex restores the write bit.
- In the command line, %path is replaced with the file or directory to
operate on.
- (When annex.crippledfilesystem is set, git-annex will not try to
remove/restore the write bit, but it will still run these hooks.)
- annex.tune.objecthash1,
annex.tune.objecthashlower, annex.tune.branchhash1
- These can be passed to git annex init to tune the repository. They
cannot be safely changed in a running repository and should never be set
in global git configuration. For details, see
<https://git-annex.branchable.com/tuning/>.
Remotes are configured using these settings in
.git/config.
- remote.<name>.annex-cost
- When determining which repository to transfer annexed files from or to,
ones with lower costs are preferred. The default cost is 100 for local
repositories, and 200 for remote repositories.
- remote.<name>.annex-cost-command
- If set, the command is run, and the number it outputs is used as the cost.
This allows varying the cost based on e.g., the current network.
- remote.<name>.annex-start-command
- A command to run when git-annex begins to use the remote. This can be used
to, for example, mount the directory containing the remote.
- The command may be run repeatedly when multiple git-annex processes are
running concurrently.
- remote.<name>.annex-stop-command
- A command to run when git-annex is done using the remote.
- The command will only be run once *all* running git-annex processes are
finished using the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-shell
- Specify an alternative git-annex-shell executable on the remote instead of
looking for "git-annex-shell" on the PATH.
- This is useful if the git-annex-shell program is outside the PATH or has a
non-standard name.
- remote.<name>.annex-ignore
- If set to true, prevents git-annex from storing file contents on
this remote by default. (You can still request it be used by the
--from and --to options.)
- This is, for example, useful if the remote is located somewhere without
git-annex-shell. (For example, if it's on GitHub). Or, it could be used if
the network connection between two repositories is too slow to be used
normally.
- This does not prevent git-annex sync (or the git-annex assistant) from
syncing the git repository to the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-ignore-command
- If set, the command is run, and if it exits nonzero, that's the same as
setting annex-ignore to true. This allows controlling behavior based on
e.g., the current network.
- remote.<name>.annex-sync
- If set to false, prevents git-annex sync (and the git-annex
assistant) from syncing with this remote by default. However, git annex
sync <name> can still be used to sync with the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-sync-command
- If set, the command is run, and if it exits nonzero, that's the same as
setting annex-sync to false. This allows controlling behavior based on
e.g., the current network.
- remote.<name>.annex-pull
- If set to false, prevents git-annex sync (and the git-annex
assistant etc) from ever pulling (or fetching) from the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-push
- If set to false, prevents git-annex sync (and the git-annex
assistant etc) from ever pushing to the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-readonly
- If set to true, prevents git-annex from making changes to a remote.
This both prevents git-annex sync from pushing changes, and prevents
storing or removing files from read-only remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-verify,
annex.verify
- By default, git-annex will verify the checksums of objects downloaded from
remotes. If you trust a remote and don't want the overhead of these
checksums, you can set this to false.
- Note that even when this is set to false, git-annex does
verification in some edge cases, where it's likely the case than an object
was downloaded incorrectly, or when needed for security.
- remote.<name>.annex-tracking-branch
- This is for use with special remotes that support exports and
imports.
- When set to eg, "master", this tells git-annex that you want the
special remote to track that branch.
- When set to eg, "master:subdir", the special remote tracks only
the subdirectory of that branch.
- git-annex sync --content will import changes from the remote and
merge them into the annex-tracking-branch. They also export changes made
to the branch to the remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-export-tracking
- Deprecated name for remote.<name>.annex-tracking-branch. Will
still be used if it's configured and
remote.<name>.annex-tracking-branch is not.
- remote.<name>.annexUrl
- Can be used to specify a different url than the regular
remote.<name>.url for git-annex to use when talking with the
remote. Similar to the pushUrl used by git-push.
- remote.<name>.annex-uuid
- git-annex caches UUIDs of remote repositories here.
- remote.<name>.annex-config-uuid
- Used for some special remotes, points to a different special remote
configuration to use.
- remote.<name>.annex-retry,
annex.retry
- Number of times a transfer that fails can be retried. (default 0)
- remote.<name>.annex-forward-retry,
annex.forward-retry
- If a transfer made some forward progress before failing, this allows it to
be retried even when annex.retry does not. The value is the maximum
number of times to do that. (default 5)
- When both annex.retry and this are set, the maximum number of
retries is the larger of the two.
- remote.<name>.annex-retry-delay,
annex.retry-delay
- Number of seconds to delay before the first retry of a transfer. When
making multiple retries of the same transfer, the delay doubles after each
retry. (default 1)
- remote.<name>.annex-bwlimit,
annex.bwlimit
- This can be used to limit how much bandwidth is used for a transfer from
or to a remote.
- For example, to limit transfers to 1 mebibyte per second: git config
annex.bwlimit "1MiB"
- This will work with many remotes, including git remotes, but not for
remotes where the transfer is run by a separate program than
git-annex.
- remote.<name>.annex-stalldetecton,
annex.stalldetection
- Configuring this lets stalled or too-slow transfers be detected, and dealt
with, so rather than getting stuck, git-annex will cancel the stalled
operation. The transfer will be considered to have failed, so settings
like annex.retry will control what it does next.
- By default, git-annex detects transfers that have probably stalled, and
suggests configuring this. If it is incorrectly detecting stalls, setting
this to "false" will avoid that.
- Set to "true" to enable automatic stall detection. If a remote
does not update its progress consistently, no automatic stall detection
will be done. And it may take a while for git-annex to decide a remote is
really stalled when using automatic stall detection, since it needs to be
conservative about what looks like a stall.
- For more fine control over what constitutes a stall, set to a value in the
form "$amount/$timeperiod" to specify how much data git-annex
should expect to see flowing, minimum, over a given period of time.
- For example, to detect outright stalls where no data has been transferred
after 30 seconds: git config annex.stalldetection
"1KB/30s"
- Or, if you have a remote on a USB drive that is normally capable of
several megabytes per second, but has bad sectors where it gets stuck for
a long time, you could use: git config
remote.usbdrive.annex-stalldetection "1MB/1m"
- This is not enabled by default, because it can make git-annex use more
resources. To be able to cancel stalls, git-annex has to run transfers in
separate processes (one per concurrent job). So it may need to open more
connections to a remote than usual, or the communication with those
processes may make it a bit slower.
- remote.<name>.annex-checkuuid
- This only affects remotes that have their url pointing to a directory on
the same system. git-annex normally checks the uuid of such remotes each
time it's run, which lets it transparently deal with different drives
being mounted to the location at different times.
- Setting annex-checkuuid to false will prevent it from checking the uuid at
startup (although the uuid is still verified before making any changes to
the remote repository). This may be useful to set to prevent unnecessary
spin-up or automounting of a drive.
- remote.<name>.annex-trustlevel
- Configures a local trust level for the remote. This overrides the value
configured by the trust and untrust commands. The value can be any of
"trusted", "semitrusted" or
"untrusted".
- remote.<name>.annex-availability
- Can be used to tell git-annex whether a remote is LocallyAvailable or
GloballyAvailable. Normally, git-annex determines this automatically.
- remote.<name>.annex-speculate-present
- Set to "true" to make git-annex speculate that this remote may
contain the content of any file, even though its normal location tracking
does not indicate that it does. This will cause git-annex to try to get
all file contents from the remote. Can be useful in setting up a caching
remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-private
- When this is set to true, no information about the remote will be recorded
in the git-annex branch. This is mostly useful for special remotes, and is
set when using git-annex-initremote(1) with the --private
option.
- remote.<name>.annex-bare
- Can be used to tell git-annex if a remote is a bare repository or not.
Normally, git-annex determines this automatically.
- remote.<name>.annex-ssh-options
- Options to use when using ssh to talk to this remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-rsync-options
- Options to use when using rsync to or from this remote. For example, to
force IPv6, and limit the bandwidth to 100Kbyte/s, set it to -6
--bwlimit 100
- Note that git-annex-shell has a whitelist of allowed rsync options, and
others will not be be passed to the remote rsync. So using some options
may break the communication between the local and remote rsyncs.
- remote.<name>.annex-rsync-upload-options
- Options to use when using rsync to upload a file to a remote.
- These options are passed after other applicable rsync options, so can be
used to override them. For example, to limit upload bandwidth to
10Kbyte/s, set --bwlimit 10.
- remote.<name>.annex-rsync-download-options
- Options to use when using rsync to download a file from a remote.
- These options are passed after other applicable rsync options, so can be
used to override them.
- remote.<name>.annex-rsync-transport
- The remote shell to use to connect to the rsync remote. Possible values
are ssh (the default) and rsh, together with their
arguments, for instance ssh -p 2222 -c blowfish; Note that the
remote hostname should not appear there, see rsync(1) for details. When
the transport used is ssh, connections are automatically cached
unless annex.sshcaching is unset.
- remote.<name>.annex-bup-split-options
- Options to pass to bup split when storing content in this remote. For
example, to limit the bandwidth to 100Kbyte/s, set it to --bwlimit
100k (There is no corresponding option for bup join.)
- remote.<name>.annex-gnupg-options
- Options to pass to GnuPG when it's encrypting data. For instance, to use
the AES cipher with a 256 bits key and disable compression, set it to
--cipher-algo AES256 --compress-algo none. (These options take
precedence over the default GnuPG configuration, which is otherwise
used.)
- remote.<name>.annex-gnupg-decrypt-options
- Options to pass to GnuPG when it's decrypting data. (These options take
precedence over the default GnuPG configuration, which is otherwise
used.)
- annex.ssh-options,
annex.rsync-options,
- annex.rsync-upload-options, annex.rsync-download-options,
annex.bup-split-options, annex.gnupg-options,
annex.gnupg-decrypt-options
- Default options to use if a remote does not have more specific options as
described above.
- remote.<name>.annex-rsyncurl
- Used by rsync special remotes, this configures the location of the rsync
repository to use. Normally this is automatically set up by git annex
initremote, but you can change it if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-buprepo
- Used by bup special remotes, this configures the location of the bup
repository to use. Normally this is automatically set up by git annex
initremote, but you can change it if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-borgrepo
- Used by borg special remotes, this configures the location of the borg
repository to use. Normally this is automatically set up by git annex
initremote, but you can change it if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-ddarrepo
- Used by ddar special remotes, this configures the location of the ddar
repository to use. Normally this is automatically set up by git annex
initremote, but you can change it if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-directory
- Used by directory special remotes, this configures the location of the
directory where annexed files are stored for this remote. Normally this is
automatically set up by git annex initremote, but you can change it
if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-adb
- Used to identify remotes on Android devices accessed via adb. Normally
this is automatically set up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-androiddirectory
- Used by adb special remotes, this is the directory on the Android device
where files are stored for this remote. Normally this is automatically set
up by git annex initremote, but you can change it if needed.
- remote.<name>.annex-androidserial
- Used by adb special remotes, this is the serial number of the Android
device used by the remote. Normally this is automatically set up by git
annex initremote, but you can change it if needed, eg when upgrading
to a new Android device.
- remote.<name>.annex-s3
- Used to identify Amazon S3 special remotes. Normally this is automatically
set up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-glacier
- Used to identify Amazon Glacier special remotes. Normally this is
automatically set up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-web
- Used to identify web special remotes. Normally this is automatically set
up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-webdav
- Used to identify webdav special remotes. Normally this is automatically
set up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-tahoe
- Used to identify tahoe special remotes. Points to the configuration
directory for tahoe.
- remote.<name>.annex-gcrypt
- Used to identify gcrypt special remotes. Normally this is automatically
set up by git annex initremote.
- It is set to "true" if this is a gcrypt remote. If the gcrypt
remote is accessible over ssh and has git-annex-shell available to manage
it, it's set to "shell".
- remote.<name>.annex-git-lfs
- Used to identify git-lfs special remotes. Normally this is automatically
set up by git annex initremote.
- It is set to "true" if this is a git-lfs remote.
- remote.<name>.annex-httpalso
- Used to identify httpalso special remotes. Normally this is automatically
set up by git annex initremote.
- remote.<name>.annex-externaltype
- Used external special remotes to record the type of the remote.
- Eg, if this is set to "foo", git-annex will run a
"git-annex-remote-foo" program to communicate with the external
special remote.
- If this is set to "readonly", then git-annex will not run any
external special remote program, but will try to access things stored in
the remote using http. That only works for some external special remotes,
so consult the documentation of the one you are using.
- remote.<name>.annex-hooktype
- Used by hook special remotes to record the type of the remote.
- annex.web-options
- Options to pass to curl when git-annex uses it to download urls (rather
than the default built-in url downloader).
- For example, to force IPv4 only, set it to "-4".
- Setting this option makes git-annex use curl, but only when
annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses is configured in a specific way. See
its documentation.
- Setting this option prevents git-annex from using git-credential for
prompting for http passwords. Instead, you can include "--netrc"
to make curl use your ~/.netrc file and record the passwords there.
- annex.youtube-dl-options
- Options to pass to youtube-dl (or yt-dlp) when using it to find the url to
download for a video.
- Some options may break git-annex's integration with youtube-dl. For
example, the --output option could cause it to store files somewhere
git-annex won't find them. Avoid setting here or in the youtube-dl config
file any options that cause youtube-dl to download more than one file, or
to store the file anywhere other than the current working directory.
- annex.youtube-dl-command
- Command to run for youtube-dl. Default is to use "youtube-dl" or
if that is not available in the PATH, to use "yt-dlp".
- annex.aria-torrent-options
- Options to pass to aria2c when using it to download a torrent.
- annex.http-headers
- HTTP headers to send when downloading from the web. Multiple lines of this
option can be set, one per header.
- annex.http-headers-command
- If set, the command is run and each line of its output is used as a HTTP
header. This overrides annex.http-headers.
- annex.security.allowed-url-schemes
- List of URL schemes that git-annex is allowed to download content from.
The default is "http https ftp".
- Think very carefully before changing this; there are security
implications. For example, if it's changed to allow "file" URLs,
then anyone who can get a commit into your git-annex repository could
git-annex addurl a pointer to a private file located outside that
repository, possibly causing it to be copied into your repository and
transferred on to other remotes, exposing its content.
- Any url schemes supported by curl can be listed here, but you will also
need to configure annex.allowed-ip-addresses to allow using curl.
- Some special remotes support their own domain-specific URL schemes; those
are not affected by this configuration setting.
- annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses
- By default, git-annex only makes connections to public IP addresses; it
will refuse to use HTTP and other servers on localhost or on a private
network.
- This setting can override that behavior, allowing access to particular IP
addresses that would normally be blocked. For example "127.0.0.1
::1" allows access to localhost (both IPV4 and IPV6). To allow access
to all IP addresses, use "all"
- Think very carefully before changing this; there are security
implications. Anyone who can get a commit into your git-annex repository
could git annex addurl an url on a private server, possibly causing
it to be downloaded into your repository and transferred to other remotes,
exposing its content.
- Note that, since the interfaces of curl and youtube-dl do not allow these
IP address restrictions to be enforced, curl and youtube-dl will never be
used unless annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses=all.
- To allow accessing local or private IP addresses on only specific ports,
use the syntax "[addr]:port". For example, "[127.0.0.1]:80
[127.0.0.1]:443 [::1]:80 [::1]:443" allows localhost on the http
ports only.
- annex.security.allowed-http-addresses
- Old name for annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses. If set, this is treated
the same as having annex.security.allowed-ip-addresses set.
- annex.security.allow-unverified-downloads
- For security reasons, git-annex refuses to download content from most
special remotes when it cannot check a hash to verify that the correct
content was downloaded. This particularly impacts downloading the content
of URL or WORM keys, which lack hashes.
- The best way to avoid problems due to this is to migrate files away from
such keys, before their content reaches a special remote. See
git-annex-migrate(1).
- When the content is only available from a special remote, you can use this
configuration to force git-annex to download it. But you do so at your own
risk, and it's very important you read and understand the information
below first!
- Downloading unverified content from encrypted special remotes is
prevented, because the special remote could send some other encrypted
content than what you expect, causing git-annex to decrypt data that you
never checked into git-annex, and risking exposing the decrypted data to
any non-encrypted remotes you send content to.
- Downloading unverified content from (non-encrypted) external special
remotes is prevented, because they could follow http redirects to web
servers on localhost or on a private network, or in some cases to a
file:/// url.
- If you decide to bypass this security check, the best thing to do is to
only set it temporarily while running the command that gets the file. The
value to set the config to is "ACKTHPPT". For example:
-
git -c annex.security.allow-unverified-downloads=ACKTHPPT annex get
myfile
- It would be a good idea to check that it downloaded the file you expected,
too.
- remote.<name>.annex-security-allow-unverified-downloads
- Per-remote configuration of
annex.security.allow-unverified-downloads.
- annex.delayadd
- Makes the watch and assistant commands delay for the specified number of
seconds before adding a newly created file to the annex. Normally this is
not needed, because they already wait for all writers of the file to close
it.
- Note that this only delays adding files created while the daemon is
running. Changes made when it is not running will be added immediately the
next time it is started up.
- annex.expireunused
- Controls what the assistant does about unused file contents that are
stored in the repository.
- The default is false, which causes all old and unused file contents
to be retained, unless the assistant is able to move them to some other
repository (such as a backup repository).
- Can be set to a time specification, like "7d" or "1m",
and then file contents that have been known to be unused for a week or a
month will be deleted.
- annex.fscknudge
- When set to false, prevents the webapp from reminding you when using
repositories that lack consistency checks.
- annex.autoupgrade
- When set to ask (the default), the webapp will check for new versions and
prompt if they should be upgraded to. When set to true, automatically
upgrades without prompting (on some supported platforms). When set to
false, disables any upgrade checking.
- Note that upgrade checking is only done when git-annex is installed from
one of the prebuilt images from its website. This does not bypass e.g., a
Linux distribution's own upgrade handling code.
- This setting also controls whether to restart the git-annex assistant when
the git-annex binary is detected to have changed. That is useful no matter
how you installed git-annex.
- annex.autocommit
- Set to false to prevent the git-annex assistant and git-annex sync from
automatically committing changes to files in the repository.
- To configure the behavior in all clones of the repository, this can be set
in git-annex-config(1).
- annex.startupscan
- Set to false to prevent the git-annex assistant from scanning the
repository for new and changed files on startup. This will prevent it from
noticing changes that were made while it was not running, but can be a
useful performance tweak for a large repository.
- annex.listen
- Configures which address the webapp listens on. The default is localhost.
Can be either an IP address, or a hostname that resolves to the desired
address.
The key-value backend used when adding a new file to the annex can
be configured on a per-file-type basis via .gitattributes files. In
the file, the annex.backend attribute can be set to the name of the
backend to use. (See git-annex-backends(1) for information about available
backends.) For example, this here's how to use the WORM backend by default,
but the SHA256E backend for ogg files:
* annex.backend=WORM
*.ogg annex.backend=SHA256E
There is a annex.largefiles attribute, which is used to configure
which files are large enough to be added to the annex. Since attributes
cannot contain spaces, it is difficult to use for more complex
annex.largefiles settings. Setting annex.largefiles in git-annex-config(1)
is an easier way to configure it across all clones of the repository. See
git-annex-matching-expression(1) for details on the syntax.
The numcopies and mincopies settings can also be configured on a
per-file-type basis via the annex.numcopies and
annex.mincopies attributes in .gitattributes files. This
overrides other settings. For example, this makes two copies be needed for
wav files and 3 copies for flac files:
*.wav annex.numcopies=2
*.flac annex.numcopies=3
These settings are honored by git-annex whenever it's operating on
a matching file. However, when using --all, --unused, or --key to specify
keys to operate on, git-annex is operating on keys and not files, so will
not honor the settings from .gitattributes. For this reason, the git annex
numcopies and git annex mincopies commands are useful to configure a
global default.
Also note that when using views, only the toplevel .gitattributes
file is preserved in the view, so other settings in other files won't have
any effect.
git-annex itself will exit 0 on success and 1 on failure, unless
the --size-limit or --time-limit option is hit, in which case
it exits 101.
A few git-annex subcommands have other exit statuses used to
indicate specific problems, which are documented on their individual man
pages.
These environment variables are used by git-annex when set:
- GIT_WORK_TREE,
GIT_DIR
- Handled the same as they are by git, see git(1)
- GIT_SSH,
GIT_SSH_COMMAND
- Handled similarly to the same as described in git(1). The one difference
is that git-annex will sometimes pass an additional "-n"
parameter to these, as the first parameter, to prevent ssh from reading
from stdin. Since that can break existing uses of these environment
variables that don't expect the extra parameter, you will need to set
GIT_ANNEX_USE_GIT_SSH=1 to make git-annex support these.
- Note that setting either of these environment variables prevents git-annex
from automatically enabling ssh connection caching (see
annex.sshcaching), so it will slow down some operations with
remotes over ssh. It's up to you to enable ssh connection caching if you
need it; see ssh's documentation.
- Also, annex.ssh-options and
remote.<name>.annex-ssh-options won't have any effect when
these envionment variables are set.
- Usually it's better to configure any desired options through your
~/.ssh/config file, or by setting annex.ssh-options.
- GIT_ANNEX_VECTOR_CLOCK
- Normally git-annex timestamps lines in the log files committed to the
git-annex branch. Setting this environment variable to a number will make
git-annex use that (or a larger number) rather than the current number of
seconds since the UNIX epoch. Note that decimal seconds are
supported.
- This is only provided for advanced users who either have a better way to
tell which commit is current than the local clock, or who need to avoid
embedding timestamps for policy reasons.
- Some special remotes use
additional environment variables
- for authentication etc. For example, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and
GIT_ANNEX_P2P_AUTHTOKEN. See special remote documentation.
These files are used by git-annex:
.git/annex/objects/ in your git repository contains the
annexed file contents that are currently available. Annexed files in your
git repository symlink to that content.
.git/annex/ in your git repository contains other run-time
information used by git-annex.
~/.config/git-annex/autostart is a list of git repositories
to start the git-annex assistant in.
.git/hooks/pre-commit-annex in your git repository will be
run whenever a commit is made to the HEAD branch, either by git commit,
git-annex sync, or the git-annex assistant.
.git/hooks/post-update-annex in your git repository will be
run whenever the git-annex branch is updated. You can make this hook run
git update-server-info when publishing a git-annex repository by
http.
More git-annex documentation is available on its web site,
<https://git-annex.branchable.com/>
If git-annex is installed from a package, a copy of its
documentation should be included, in, for example,
/usr/share/doc/git-annex/.
Joey Hess <id@joeyh.name>
<https://git-annex.branchable.com/>