Recent comments posted to this site:
It's pretty much exactly what he said:
git-annex is not a filesystem or DropBox clone. However, the git-annex assistant is addressing some of the same needs in its own unique ways.
The git-annex assistant is not exactly like DropBox; it's not a drop-in replacement that works exactly the way dropbox works. But as it stands, right now, it can (like Dropbox) run in the background and make sure that all of your files in a special directory are mirrored to another place (a USB drive, or a server to which you have SSH access, or another computer on your home network, or another computer somewhere else which has access to the same USB drive from time to time, or has accesss to the same SSH server or S3 repository or....
It works as is but is still under heavy development and features are being added rapidly. For example, up until a month or two ago, the files in your annex were replaced with softlinks whose content resided in a hidden directory. This caused some problems esp. on OS X where native programs don't handle softlinked files very gracefully. So Joey added an entirely new way of operating called "direct mode" which uses ordinary files, much like Dropbox does.
So -- what you should expect from git-annex assistant is a program which solves many of the same problems Dropbox does (keeping a set of files magically in sync across computers) but does it in its own way, which won't be exactly like Dropbox; it will be more flexible but might require a little learning to figure out exactly how to use it the way you want. It's possible to get a very Dropbox-like system out of the box, especially now that you don't need to use softlinks, if you've got a place on the network you can use as a central remote repository for your files, or if you only want to synchronize two or more computers on the same local network.
"git-annex" itself is the plumbing used by git-annex assistant, or to put it another way, the engine that the assistant has under the hood. Git-annex itself is extremely simple and stable but should only be used by people already familiar with the command line, perhaps even people already familiar with git.
That's my point of view as an enthusiastic user. Joey may have his own perspective to share. :)
hi joey,
i'm excited by your project here but also confused by its direction. the kickstarter page has the header: "git-annex assistant: Like DropBox, but with your own cloud." this page says "git-annex is not a ... DropBox clone." these seem to be in direct opposition.
i'm looking for what is described by the header on your kickstarter page. i assume your backers are looking for the the same thing (a self hosted DropBox). for my use, dropbox is perfect, except for the fact that i have to pay a monthly fee to store my data on someone else's server when i would like to buy my own storage medium and run some open source dropbox clone on my own server.
can you explain more clearly what dropbox features your project lacks (/will lack)? and why where is a difference between your fundraising page and this one?
maybe i'm just confused by the difference between git-annex and git-annex assistant. does git-annex assistant truely aim to be a dropbox clone?
Would it be possible to support Rapidshare as a new special remote? They offer unlimited storage for 6-10€ per month. It would be great for larger backups. Their API can be found here: http://images.rapidshare.com/apidoc.txt
If encryption is not used, the files are stored in S3 as-is, and can be accessed directly. They are stored in a hashed directory structure with the names of their key used, rather than the original filename. To get back to the original filename, a copy of the git repo would also be needed.
With encryption, you need the gpg key used in the encryption, or, for shared encryption, a symmetric key which is stored in the git repo.
See future proofing for non-S3 specific discussion of this topic.
cabal update && cabal upgrade git-annex