The [[special remotes]] available all do great things and enable a ton of different services to be integrated.

Strikingly, the one service I can't satisfactorily integrate with git-annex is a remote folder on a eg NAS (think: computer without git-annex installed) that I want to look like the original annex. As in, when I do a 'tree annexdir' it'd look the same on both locations (except, on the remote there would not be any symlinks, it'd be like it was in directmode, and there would not be a .git subdir).

## Why? Use Case?

I have a Synology NAS that I share access with with my wife. I want her to be able to access the files (photos/videos/music) in a sane manner (ie: not traversing sub-sub-sub 'randomly' named directories) but I also want to be able to manage them with git-annex on my machine (to gain the standard git-annex benefits, specifically the bob the archivist use case). The NAS has the ability to use ssh+rsync, so I'll assume those two tools can be used.

This special remote could be thought of as the 'least common denominator of special remotes'; almost any server with ssh+rsync could be a remote, no matter if you have install privs or if the architecture (eg: ARM) is supported by git-annex.

## Issues?

First and foremost, this can't be (really really shouldn't be) a trusted remote; my wife could accidentally delete all files on the NAS while I am away. So my local git-annex shouldn't assume the NAS counts towards numcopies (unless I'm a real masochist).

Secondly, what to do when files change/are added/removed on the special remote? Probably the same thing that the assistant does with everything. The only thing special is that new/modified files will need to be copied locally from this special remote before being added to the annex (to get hash and such).

> This is not feaisble given git-annex's design. If I wanted to
> make something completely unlike git-annex, I suppose it could be done,
> but it's off topic here. [[wontfix|done]]. 
>
> If you want to use git-annex on a Synology NAS, the arm standalone build
> will work, and then you can use the command-line, or the assistant
> to maintain a git repository that contains your files as desired. --[[Joey]]