[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="praet"
 ip="81.240.27.89"
 subject="Brainfart"
 date="2011-03-20T20:11:27Z"
 content="""
Haven't given these any serious thought (which will become apparent in a moment) but hoping they will give birth to some less retarded ideas:

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### Bait'n'switch

- pre-commit: Replace all staged symlinks (when pointing to annexed files) with plaintext files containing the key of their respective annexed content, re-stage, and add their paths (relative to repo root) to .gitignore.
- post-commit: Replace the plaintext files with (git annex fix'ed) symlinks.

In doing so, the blobs to be committed can remain unaltered, irrespective of their related files' depth in the directory hierarchy.

To prevent git from reporting ALL annexed files as unstaged changes after running post-commit hook, their paths would need to be added to .gitignore.

This wouldn't cause any issues when adding files, very little when modifying files (would need some alterations to \"git annex unlock\"), BUT would make git totally oblivious to removals...

---

### Manifest-based (re)population
- Keep a manifest of all annexed files (key + relative path)
- DON'T track the symlinks (.gitignore)
- Populate/update the directory structure using a post-commit hook.

... thus circumventing the issue entirely, yet diffstats (et al.) would be rather uninformative.

---

***Wide open to suggestions, criticism, mocking laughter and finger-pointing :)***
"""]]