annex-test

This is a simple repo to test out git-annex, which is one solution to the problem of versioning large binary files. The idea is that the large files themselves are not stored in git, but symbolic links to the data, as well as hashes to track changes, and in some cases external links to the data (say in S3, or on the web via URLs) called "special remotes" are stored in git.

This repo just demonstrates using URLS as special remotes. I followed this tutorial for setting up a git-annex project in github, with my specific steps listed below. You will need to install git-annex to work with or replicate this project. Skip steps 3 and 4 if you are simply using an existing repo like this one that is already setup to work with git-annex.

How to create repo

1. I created a repo called annex-test in github.

2. Then I cloned it

   git clone git@github.com:animetrics/annex-test.git
   

3. Then told git-annex to use the repo

   cd annex-test
   git annex init 'my laptop'
   

4. Since you can't actually store the contents of the annex files in github, run

   git config remote.origin.annex-ignore true
   

5. I created a beatles directory and added pictures from the web of John Lennon and Paul McCartney mkdir beatles cd beatles

   git annex addurl http://blogs.post-gazette.com/2013Scott/John-Lennon.jpg 
   git annex addurl http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/song_review/paulmccartney-624-1382708613-1382734189.jpg 
   

6. Now commit

   git commit -am "added john lennon and paul mccartney"
   

7. And push to the repo. Note there are 2 branches and they both need to be pushed

   git push origin master git-annex
   

8. Again, see here for more details.