Started today doing testing of [[syncing]], and found some bugs and things
it needs to do better. But was quickly sidetracked when I noticed that
`transferkey` was making a commit to the git-annex branch for every file it
transferred, which is too slow and bloats history too much.

To fix that actually involved fixing a long-standing annoyance; that
read-only git-annex commands like `whereis` sometimes start off with
"(Recording state in git)", when the journal contains some not yet
committed changes to the git-annex branch. I had to carefully think
through the cases to avoid those commits.

As I was working on that, I found a real nasty lurking bug in the git-annex
branch handling. It's unlikely to happen unless `annex.autocommit=false` is
set, but it could occur when two git-annex processes race one another just
right too. The root of the bug is that `git cat-file --batch` does not
always show changes made to the index after it started. I think it does
in enough cases to have tricked me before, but in general it can't be
trusted to report the current state of the index, but only some past state.

I was able to fix the bug, by ensuring that changes being made to the
branch are always visible in either the journal or the branch -- never in
the index alone.

----

Hopefully something less low-level tomorrow..!