### Please describe the problem. I found the discussion in [directory](/special_remotes/directory) quite confusing until I looked at it the right way. Some tweaking of the documentation might help. ### What steps will reproduce the problem? Possible method - get a newbie to read the page. ### What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system? n/a ### Please provide any additional information below. Below is an untested patch that I think would make the documentation more helpful to me on a first reading. Tweaks to doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn * document the 'directory' option (!) * try to make it clearer what is different about this remote, including giving an example of how the directory structure looks. * grammar fix in opening paragraph --- doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn | 16 +++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn b/doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn index 4d72e8b..7f076b3 100644 --- a/doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn +++ b/doc/special_remotes/directory.mdwn @@ -1,10 +1,12 @@ This special remote type stores file contents in directory. One use case for this would be if you have a removable drive that -you want to use it to sneakernet files between systems (possibly with +you want to use to sneakernet files between systems (possibly with \[[encrypted|encryption]] contents). Just set up both systems to use the drive's mountpoint as a directory remote. +Note that directory remotes have a special directory structure +(by design, the same as the \[[rsync|rsync]] remote). If you just want two copies of your repository with the files "visible" in the tree in both, the directory special remote is not what you want. Instead, you should use a regular `git clone` of your git-annex repository. @@ -14,6 +16,8 @@ Instead, you should use a regular `git clone` of your git-annex repository. These parameters can be passed to `git annex initremote` to configure the remote: +* `directory` - The path to directory in which the remote resides + * `encryption` - One of "none", "hybrid", "shared", or "pubkey". See \[[encryption]]. @@ -31,3 +35,13 @@ Setup example: # git annex initremote usbdrive type=directory directory=/media/usbdrive/ encryption=none # git annex describe usbdrive "usb drive on /media/usbdrive/" + +Usage example: + # git annex copy mycoolfile.mp4 --to usbdrive + # ls -aF /media/usbdrive + ./ ../ 42b/ .git/ tmp/ + # git annex whereis mycoolfile.mp4 + whereis mycoolfile.mp4 (2 copies) + 320053d5-892f-46d2-89f0-d6e9d09e6398 -- here + 6747a48b-fad2-41a7-9033-8d8daa35c5f8 -- usbdrive + ok -- 1.8.5.2 # End of transcript or log. > Largely applied (except example at the end). I agree these > changes make it much clearer, especially adding the missing documentation > of the directory parameter. So, [[done]]. Note that this website is a > wiki and users like you are welcome to edit pages directly to improve the > documentation. --[[Joey]]