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git-annex

git-annex#

git annex is an extension to git that lets it handle large repos spread in pieces across multiple servers/disks/accounts.

We are using it because

  1. We have datasets we need to trace but they are too large for plain git to handle them well

  2. It is compatible with datalad which gaining popularity in the neuroimaging community

It has about a thousand variants and options. This covers only the parts we use.

git-annex brings with it all the power of git. You should be somewhat familiar with branches, tags,. Please read the git book. The datalad handbook also has useful perspective, though not all of it is relevant to how we do things.

Installation#

You must have a unix OS. git-annex is simply not compatible with anything else.

  • Arch: pacman -Sy git-annex

  • Fedora/RedHat/CentOS: dnf install git-annex

  • Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install git-annex

  • ComputeCanada, a supercomputer we have accounts on: module load StdEnv/2020  && module load git-annex in every session or batch job

  • if on an older system and can’t upgrade, you can try installing conda (or miniforge or mambaforge) and then using conda install -f conda-forge git-annex (or `mamba install -f conda-forge git-annex).

brew install git-annex

Install WSL, pick a distro, and then run one of:

Install VirtualBox, install a Linux distro inside of it, and then follow the Linux instructions.

Warning

Check that git annex version reports version 8 or higher! It should look like:

$ git annex version
git-annex version: 8.20210310-ga343ea76c8
build flags: Assistant Webapp Pairing Inotify DBus DesktopNotify TorrentParser MagicMime Feeds Testsuite S3 WebDAV
dependency versions: aws-0.22 bloomfilter-2.0.1.0 cryptonite-0.28 DAV-1.3.4 feed-1.3.2.0 ghc-8.10.4 http-client-0.7.6 persistent-sqlite-2.11.1.0 torrent-10000.1.1 uuid-1.3.14 yesod-1.6.1.0
key/value backends: SHA256E SHA256 SHA512E SHA512 SHA224E SHA224 SHA384E SHA384 SHA3_256E SHA3_256 SHA3_512E SHA3_512 SHA3_224E SHA3_224 SHA3_384E SHA3_384 SKEIN256E SKEIN256 SKEIN512E SKEIN512 BLAKE2B256E BLAKE2B256 BLAKE2B512E BLAKE2B512 BLAKE2B160E BLAKE2B160 BLAKE2B224E BLAKE2B224 BLAKE2B384E BLAKE2B384 BLAKE2BP512E BLAKE2BP512 BLAKE2S256E BLAKE2S256 BLAKE2S160E BLAKE2S160 BLAKE2S224E BLAKE2S224 BLAKE2SP256E BLAKE2SP256 BLAKE2SP224E BLAKE2SP224 SHA1E SHA1 MD5E MD5 WORM URL X*
remote types: git gcrypt p2p S3 bup directory rsync web bittorrent webdav adb tahoe glacier ddar git-lfs httpalso borg hook external
operating system: linux x86_64
supported repository versions: 8
upgrade supported from repository versions: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Global git config#

For smooth operation, everyone should do on all of their machines:

git config --global push.default current

And specifically for git-annex:

git config --global annex.thin true # save disk space by de-duplicating checked out and annexed copies
git config --global annex.private true # prevent attempting to share your local copy of the annex, which is impossible when working in a team

See below to understand what this setting offers.

New repo#

Use this recipe to make new datasets:

mkdir my-new-repo
cd my-new-repo

git init
vi README
# write something useful in README
git add README && git commit -m "Initial commit"

cat <<EOF > .gitignore
.DS_Store
EOF

cat <<EOF > .gitattributes
# Normalize line-endings to \n
*             text=auto

# Configure filetypes stored by git-annex.
# by default git-annex sets * filter=annex, but that is very slow:
# it copies even non-annexed files through git-annex even though it will decide not to handle them.
# this overrides that behaviour so that only annexed files must be processed.
*             annex.largefiles=nothing
*.nii.gz      filter=annex annex.largefiles=anything
*.nii         filter=annex annex.largefiles=anything
*.tif         filter=annex annex.largefiles=anything
EOF

git add .gitignore .gitattributes && git commit -m "Configure git-annex"

git annex init
# .gitattributes runs the filter on 'git add', which leaves files 'unlocked'; i.e. as themselves, instead of as symlinks into .git/annex/objects; this setting ensures files added with 'git annex add' are also 'unlocked'.
git annex config --set annex.addunlocked true 
                                        
# Here, copy in or create initial files, wherever they are from:
# rsync, wget, curl, tar, dropbox, etc <...>, then run the following commands.

git add .
git commit -m "Initial data"

If you are working on a private, internal dataset, continue by uploading to data.neuro.polymtl.ca.

Troubleshooting#

version problems#

If you have any error at all, the first thing to check is that you have git-annex version 8, as explained above.

checking annex file locations#

The content of annexed files that have been downloaded locally is stored under repo/.git/annex/objects/. You can find which specific file corresponds to by using git show or git log -p to see the content that git has recorded for the file – which will be a string giving the “annex pointer”:

$ git show HEAD:derivatives/labels/sub-1140317/anat/sub-1140317_T1w_seg-manual.nii.gz
/annex/objects/SHA256E-s28305--3f309650bbc2d5146d9e1d1e24c7b17ee82c9da2fb609030ee83f3c1f2d74acb.nii.gz

and then locating a file with this name in .git/annex/objects/; however, it is not as simple as just combining the two together, git-annex prepends extra filenames, so you need to use find(1) to locate the file:

$ find .git/annex/objects/ -name "SHA256E-s28305--3f309650bbc2d5146d9e1d1e24c7b17ee82c9da2fb609030ee83f3c1f2d74acb.nii.gz"
.git/annex/objects/6V/X3/SHA256E-s28305--3f309650bbc2d5146d9e1d1e24c7b17ee82c9da2fb609030ee83f3c1f2d74acb.nii.gz
.git/annex/objects/6V/X3/SHA256E-s28305--3f309650bbc2d5146d9e1d1e24c7b17ee82c9da2fb609030ee83f3c1f2d74acb.nii.gz/SHA256E-s28305--3f309650bbc2d5146d9e1d1e24c7b17ee82c9da2fb609030ee83f3c1f2d74acb.nii.gz

“a cosmetic problem affecting git status”#

Sometimes the git-annex filter will glitch, particularly during long uploads or downloads. It will usually – but not always – give you a warning in these cases saying “a cosmetic problem affecting git status”. Despite the innocuous sounded warning, this glitch prevents git operating. A symptom of this glitch is that git status reports many, many “modified” files that shouldn’t be.

The fix is:

git status | sed -n 's/modified://p' | xargs git update-index -q --refresh

This doesn’t touch file contents, so it should be safe to run anytime.

The issue is that git-annex v8 uses a filter to expand the small pointers committed to git to full files and vice versa, and if interrupted while doing its work, it can leave files with full annexed contents that do not match the annex pointers git is expecting to see. update-index gives git a kickstart to fix it.

Resetting#

git-annex init writes to a lot of places: the git-annex branch, .git/annex (including several sqlite databases?), .git/config, and, sometimes, .git/info/attributes.

To get rid of it without getting rid of the complete repo, you can use

git annex uninit

To reset just the ID of the current copy, to make it appear like a fresh repo to git annex whereis:

git config --unset annex.uuid
#  then git annex init again? or what?

rm: cannot remove#

When trying to get rid of a git-annex dataset, you will run into, for example:

$ rm -rf data-single-subject/
[...]
rm: cannot remove 'data-single-subject/.git/annex/objects/mF/GV/SHA256E-s1082687--290a43b80da6f608e3d47107f3b6c05e98eebe56ed4eea633748c08bd1a7837a.nii.gz/SHA256E-s1082687--290a43b80da6f608e3d47107f3b6c05e98eebe56ed4eea633748c08bd1a7837a.nii.gz': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove 'data-single-subject/.git/annex/objects/Vq/vF/SHA256E-s15564390--7d3e45f0d4c67f31883b76eafc6cfdca1c1591590e2243dc8d443b07616b3609.nii.gz/SHA256E-s15564390--7d3e45f0d4c67f31883b76eafc6cfdca1c1591590e2243dc8d443b07616b3609.nii.gz': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove 'data-single-subject/.git/annex/objects/79/G6/SHA256E-s7183853--3262ac5d6c5f573720c5e508da47608bd9fa49d6cd4dd547f75046c1a2f0d5b6.nii.gz/SHA256E-s7183853--3262ac5d6c5f573720c5e508da47608bd9fa49d6cd4dd547f75046c1a2f0d5b6.nii.gz': Permission denied

This is because git-annex tries extra hard to make it hard to lose data, by marking its contents read-only. If you really intend to erase the dataset you need to open the permissions first with chmod -R +w, for example:

$ chmod -R +w data-single-subject/.git/annex/
$ rm -rf data-single-subject/
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