git-annex tries to ensure that the configured number of [[copies]] of your
data always exist, and leaves it up to you to use commands like `git annex
get` and `git annex drop` to move the content to the repositories you want
to contain it. But often, it can be good to have more fine-grained
control over which content is wanted by which repositories. Configuring
this allows the git-annex assistant as well as 
`git annex get --auto`, `git annex drop --auto`, `git annex sync --content`,
etc to do smarter things.

Preferred content settings can be edited using `git
annex vicfg`, or viewed and set at the command line with `git annex wanted`.
Each repository can have its own settings, and other repositories will
try to honor those settings when interacting with it.
(So there's no local `.git/config` for preferred content settings.)

The idea is that you write an expression that files are matched against.
If a file matches, the repository wants to store its content.
If it doesn't, the repository wants to drop its content
(if there are enough copies elsewhere to allow removing it).

## writing expressions

[[!template id=note text="""
### [[quickstart|standard_groups]]

Rather than writing your own preferred content expression, you can use
several standard ones included in git-annex that are tuned to cover different
common use cases.

You do this by putting a repository in a group,
and simply setting its preferred content to "standard" to match whatever
is standard for that group. See [[standard_groups]] for a list.
"""]]

See the man page [[git-annex-preferred-content]] for details on the syntax
of preferred content expressions.

An example:

	include=*.mp3 and (not largerthan=100mb) and exclude=old/*

This makes all .mp3 files, and all other files that are less than 100 mb in
size be preferred content. It excludes all files under the "old" directory.

## upgrades

It's important that all clones of a repository can understand one-another's
preferred content expressions, especially when using the git-annex
assistant. So using newly added keywords can cause a problem if
an older version of git-annex is in use elsewhere.

Before git-annex version 5.20140320, when git-annex saw a keyword it
did not understand, it defaulted to assuming *all* files were
preferred content. From version 5.20140320, git-annex has a nicer fallback
behavior: When it is unable to parse a preferred content expression,
it assumes all files that are currently present are preferred content.

Here are recent changes to preferred content expressions, and the version
they were added in.

* "nothing" 6.201600202
* "anything" 5.20150616
* "standard" 5.20140314  
  (only when used in a more complicated expression; "standard" by
  itself has been supported for a long time)
* "groupwanted=" 5.20140314
* "metadata=" 5.20140221
* "lackingcopies=", "approxlackingcopies=", "unused=" 5.20140127
* "inpreferreddir=" 4.20130501
* "metadata=field<number" etc 6.20160227