NAME
git-annex sync - synchronize local repository with remotes
SYNOPSIS
git annex sync [remote ...]
DESCRIPTION
This command synchronizes the local repository with its remotes.
The sync process involves first committing any local changes to files
that have previously been added to the repository,
then fetching and merging the current branch and the git-annex
branch
from the remote repositories, and finally pushing the changes back to
those branches on the remote repositories. You can use standard git
commands to do each of those steps by hand, or if you don't want to
worry about the details, you can use sync.
The content of annexed objects is not synced by default, but the --content option (see below) can make that also be synchronized.
When using git-annex, often remotes are not bare repositories, because it's helpful to add remotes for nearby machines that you want to access the same annexed content. Syncing with a non-bare remote will not normally update the remote's current branch with changes from the local repository. (Unless the remote is configured with receive.denyCurrentBranch=updateInstead.)
To make working with such non-bare remotes easier, sync pushes not only
local master
to remote master
, but also to remote synced/master
(and
similar with other branches). When git-annex sync
is later run on the
remote, it will merge the synced/
branches that the repository has
received.
OPTIONS
[remote]
By default, all remotes are synced, except for remotes that have
remote.<name>.annex-sync
set to false. By specifying the names of remotes (or remote groups), you can control which ones to sync with.--fast
Only sync with the remotes with the lowest annex-cost value configured.
--only-annex
-a
,--not-only-annex
Only sync the git-annex branch and annexed content with remotes, not other git branches.
This avoids pulling and pushing other branches, and it avoids committing any local changes. It's up to you to use regular git commands to do that.
The
annex.synconlyannex
configuration can be set to true to make this be the default behavior ofgit-annex sync
. To override such a setting, use--not-only-annex
.When this is combined with --no-content, only the git-annex branch will be synced.
--commit
,--no-commit
A commit is done by default (unless
annex.autocommit
is set to false).Use --no-commit to avoid committing local changes.
--message=msg
Use this option to specify a commit message.
--pull
,--no-pull
By default, syncing pulls from remotes and imports from some special remotes. Use --no-pull to disable all pulling.
When
remote.<name>.annex-pull
orremote.<name>.annex-sync
are set to false, pulling is disabled for those remotes, and using--pull
will not enable it.--push
,--no-push
By default, syncing pushes changes to remotes and exports to some special remotes. Use --no-push to disable all pushing.
When
remote.<name>.annex-push
orremote.<name>.annex-sync
are set to false, orremote.<name>.annex-readonly
is set to true, pushing is disabled for those remotes, and using--push
will not enable it.--content
,--no-content
Normally, syncing does not transfer the contents of annexed files. The --content option causes the content of annexed files to also be uploaded and downloaded as necessary.
The
annex.synccontent
configuration can be set to true to make content be synced by default.Normally this tries to get each annexed file that the local repository does not yet have, and then copies each file to every remote that it is syncing with. This behavior can be overridden by configuring the preferred content of a repository. See git-annex-preferred-content(1).
When
remote.<name>.annex-tracking-branch
is configured for a special remote and that branch is checked out, syncing will import changes from the remote, merge them into the branch, and export any changes that have been committed to the branch back to the remote. See See git-annex-import(1) and git-annex-export(1) for details about how importing and exporting work.--content-of=path
-C path
While --content operates on all annexed files, --content-of allows limiting the transferred files to ones in a given location.
This option can be repeated multiple times with different paths.
--all
-A
This option, when combined with
--content
, makes all available versions of all files be synced, when preferred content settings allow.Note that preferred content settings that use
include=
orexclude=
will only match the version of files currently in the work tree, but not past versions of files.--jobs=N
-JN
Enables parallel syncing with up to the specified number of jobs running at once. For example:
-J10
Setting this to "cpus" will run one job per CPU core.
When there are multiple git remotes, pushes will be made to them in parallel. Pulls are not done in parallel because that tends to be less efficient. When --content is synced, the files are processed in parallel as well.
--resolvemerge
,--no-resolvemerge
By default, merge conflicts are automatically handled by sync. When two conflicting versions of a file have been committed, both will be added to the tree, under different filenames. For example, file "foo" would be replaced with "foo.variant-A" and "foo.variant-B". (See git-annex-resolvemerge(1) for details.)
Use
--no-resolvemerge
to disable this automatic merge conflict resolution. It can also be disabled by settingannex.resolvemerge
to false.--cleanup
Removes the local and remote
synced/
branches, which were created and pushed bygit-annex sync
.This can come in handy when you've synced a change to remotes and now want to reset your master branch back before that change. So you run
git reset
and force-push the master branch to remotes, only to find that the nextgit annex merge
orgit annex sync
brings the changes back. Why? Because thesynced/master
branch is hanging around and still has the change in it. Cleaning up thesynced/
branches prevents that problem.
SEE ALSO
git-annex(1)
git-annex-preferred-content(1)
AUTHOR
Joey Hess id@joeyh.name
Warning: Automatically converted into a man page by mdwn2man. Edit with care.
With approptiate locking to prevent concurrency problems. As is the case extensively throughout git-annex, although users seem to keep expecting that to not be the case no matter how many times I assure them it is.
git-annex sync pulls before pushing. If another push occurs at the same time, the push might fail, but retrying the pull will not avoid that same situation occurring again. I don't think it makes sense for git-annex sync to retry an arbitrary number of times.
When a push would result in a non-fast-forward merge, git-annex-sync currently fails. Maybe instead, pull and retry pushing? This happens in the context of several processes trying to push to the same git-annex repo.
Also, the docs mention synced/master, but it's synced/current-branch.