## version 3.20121009

This is a maintenance release of the git-annex assistant, which is still in
beta.

In general, anything you can configure with the assistant's web app
will work. Some examples of use cases supported by this release include:

* [[Pairing|pairing_walkthrough]] two computers that are on the same local
  network (or VPN) and automatically keeping the files in the annex in
  sync as changes are made to them.
* Cloning your repository to removable drives, USB keys, etc. The assistant
  will notice when the drive is mounted and keep it in sync.
  Such a drive can be stored as an offline backup, or transported between
  computers to keep them in sync.
* Cloning your repository to a remote server, running ssh, and uploading
  changes made to your files to the server. There is special support
  for using the rsync.net cloud provider this way, or any shell account
  on a typical unix server, such as a Linode VPS can be used.

The following are known limitations of this release of the git-annex
assistant:

* On Mac OSX and BSD operating systems, the assistant uses kqueue to watch
  files. Kqueue has to open every directory it watches, so too many
  directories will run it out of the max number of open files (typically
  1024), and fail. See [[bugs/Issue_on_OSX_with_some_system_limits]]
  for a workaround.
* In order to ensure that all multiple repositories are kept in sync,
  each computer with a repository must be running the git-annex assistant.
* The assistant does not yet always manage to keep repositories in sync
  when some are hidden from others behind firewalls.

## version 3.20120924

This is the first beta release of the git-annex assistant.

In general, anything you can configure with the assistant's web app
will work. Some examples of use cases supported by this release include:

* [[Pairing|pairing_walkthrough]] two computers that are on the same local
  network (or VPN) and automatically keeping the files in the annex in
  sync as changes are made to them.
* Cloning your repository to removable drives, USB keys, etc. The assistant
  will notice when the drive is mounted and keep it in sync.
  Such a drive can be stored as an offline backup, or transported between
  computers to keep them in sync.
* Cloning your repository to a remote server, running ssh, and uploading
  changes made to your files to the server. There is special support
  for using the rsync.net cloud provider this way, or any shell account
  on a typical unix server, such as a Linode VPS can be used.

The following are known limitations of this release of the git-annex
assistant:

* On Mac OSX and BSD operating systems, the assistant uses kqueue to watch
  files. Kqueue has to open every directory it watches, so too many
  directories will run it out of the max number of open files (typically
  1024), and fail. See [[bugs/Issue_on_OSX_with_some_system_limits]]
  for a workaround.
* In order to ensure that all multiple repositories are kept in sync,
  each computer with a repository must be running the git-annex assistant.
* The assistant does not yet always manage to keep repositories in sync
  when some are hidden from others behind firewalls.
* If a file is checked into git as a normal file and gets modified
  (or merged, etc), it will be converted into an annexed file. So you
  should not mix use of the assistant with normal git files in the same
  repository yet.
* If you `git annex unlock` a file, it will immediately be re-locked.
  See [[bugs/watcher_commits_unlocked_files]].