git-annex/ tips/ Accessing files in bare remotes without git-annex

git-annex is amazing for my large files backup necessities, but I am a bit scared for the long-term possibility of accessing data, without git-annex.

For this reason I have prepared a small Python tool that accesses the content of bare git-annex repositories. The tool retrieves the locations of a file, and the path to the file in the current annex. This works with the last v7 version of the git-annex format.

This is motivated by the fact that in the master branch the files are stores as links to .git/annex/objects/XX/YY/KEY/KEY (as it is correct for non-bare repos), while in the bare the files are stored in annex/objecst/ZZ/WW/KEY/KEY.

The source code is available here: https://gist.github.com/eruffaldi/924f6b53a63dede6e59f

Updated

- support for non-bare repositories
- option for creating a tar file containing all the master checked out with the symbolic links to the content files. This is mountable with the archivemount tool

Comment by emanuele.ruffaldi — Wed Oct 29 14:05:27 2025
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