git-annex/ design/ assistant/ polls/ goals for April

What should I work on in April? I expect I could get perhaps two of these features done in a month if I'm lucky. I have only 3 more funded months, and parts of one will be spent working on porting to Windows, so choose wisely! --Joey

[[!poll open=yes expandable=yes 4 "upload and download rate limiting" 15 "get webapp working on Android" 5 "deltas: speed up syncing modified versions of existing files" 8 "encrypted git remotes using git-remote-gcrypt" 0 "add support for more cloud storage remotes" 19 "don't work on features, work on making it easier to install and use" 2 "Handle duplicate files" 6 "direct mode (aka real files instead of symlinks) [already done --joey]" 3 "start windows port now"]]

References:

- rate limiting
- Android
- deltas to speed up syncing modified files (at least for remotes using rsync)
- encrypted git remotes
- more cloud providers (OpenStack Swift, Owncloud, Google drive, Dropbox, Mediafire, nimbus.io, Mega, etc.)
- old poll on "what is preventing me from using git-annex assistant" (many of the items on it should be fixed now, but I have plenty of bug reports to chew on still)

Ask for more money :-)
This is slightly off topic, but from my perspective this Kickstarter project has been a riotous success, and due to the credibility you have built up from 9 months of consistently high quality work produced in a very transparent and community-oriented fashion, I'd be surprised if you weren't able to raise more money to continue development after the 12 months is up. Assuming you want to of course :) Maybe you need a break or change of scene. But if not, it would be a shame not to continue if the userbase wants it.
Comment by http://adamspiers.myopenid.com/ — Wed Oct 29 14:05:27 2025
don't work on features option

The "don't work on features..." poll entry is a bit vague, so I figured stating my interpretation of it and why I choose it might be a good idea. I've had git-annex installed for the last few months during which it has been steadily improving, but IMO it still lacks polish. From time to time I see transient issues: (even on the current version)

- random download stalling when I know the remote is accessible
- files disappearing then reappearing without an obvious cause
- xmmp hanging

I do not have any means of replicating these issues (though IIRC some of the recently worked on bugs related to these issues). In my past experience this indicates that there are all sorts of 'fun' bugs hiding in the source which you seem to be chasing down. Heck, I could have a simple configuration error from when I set things up on my remote server. There was little documentation available when I setup my remote server for this and unless I have missed something in the RecentChanges feed, there still is relatively little. So, some issues with my xmmp daemon, local ssh keys via ssh-agent, or bad $PATH stuff could be causing things to subtlety malfunction at no fault of git-annex.

Falling back to the command line only tends to be a good response, but outside of the assistant there does not seem to be any manual way to handle the special remotes. Fair enough, but it would seem logical for error handling to recognize that these are assistant only urls rather than some generic "bad url". Just getting the right error messages while a small touch would be a sign of some polish even though it is a nitpick.

Perhaps some simple test code run repeatedly to form a stress test could reveal some odd behavior, but I'm not sure myself.

With all of that said, I like what has been done so far and I'm hoping to see all the nooks of git-annex get the polishing that they deserve.

Comment by https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkWG4T4SGZxY-q4Wo8Jbxwb67g4J-WYmQM — Wed Oct 29 14:05:27 2025
Duplicate files

Having duplicate files is fairly easy. a) Just a backup of your files, to not have accidental deleting.

b) Some programs implements UNDO command (Ctrl-Z) as simply copying over the working text file to a backup directory.

c) If you tests precompiled programs, like git annex itself, it has identical files across releases.

For more info about duplicate files, read hear these two bugreports:

http://git-annex.branchable.com/bugs/When_syncing_two_repositories44_git_annex_uses_9x_times_diskspace/ (last comment)

http://git-annex.branchable.com/bugs/Direct_mode_keeps_re-checksuming_duplicated_files/

Comment by https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawm5iosFbL2By7UFeViqkc6v-hoAtqILeDA — Wed Oct 29 14:05:27 2025
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