What steps will reproduce the problem?
Use assistant and create repository the a folder in home dir. Use textedit and save a new txt to the repository folder.
What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
The alias solution is broken. It should work more like Dropbox. Textedit saves the file initially, but it is immediately locked. Since it autosaves, it asks to unlock or duplicate. Then gives the error: "The file “Untitled 16.txt” cannot be unlocked."
If the file exists: The document “Untitled 14” could not be saved as “Untitled 14.txt”. You don’t have permission.
If you open a file from the repository (now replaced by a symlink) with textedit, there are other problems: - The filename will not be correct (will show the sha hash). - It will ask to unlock, then give the error "You don’t have permission to write to the folder that the file “SHA256E-s8--8985d9832de2e28b5e1af64258c391a34d7528709ef916bac496e698c139020c.txt” is in."
What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system?
OSX Lion git-annex version: 3.20120924
Please provide any additional information below.
Even if you fix these problems, automatic versioning in lion will probably don't work, and the symlinks seem a hackish solution and don't seem intuitive or easy to the end user. The sync should be transparent but it's not, and it's error prone. It would even be best to keep file copies in the git repo and sync them with the original folder than make symlinks.
Dropbox even allows to put a symlink in the dropbox directory, and it will sync the file.
After looking more into the git annex working, I understand the use of symlinks, but they are not always correctly handled by OSX.
Apple's Timemachine uses hardlinks for example...
Not being able to easily edit files that are in the repo without problems or quirks makes it unusable as a dropbox replacement and version control, which is a shame.
It seems many people complain about symlink behavior in Lion and Mountain Lion. I never used symlinks to files often, only to folders. I hope you can solve this problems and make it work correctly in OSX, or use hardlinks instead. Git annex sound awesome, but the people using the assistant will want KISS behavior, and don't even know what a symbolic link is.
Ok, so it seems Sharebox solves all this problems...you might want to integrate sharebox into the assistant, so non-techie people can treat the repos as mutable. Maybe make a mutable/unmutable toggle in the gui or somethink like that?
What I don't understand is the need for kqueue, if the files are not supposed to be written to without unlocking, why not use FSEvents and only monitor the folders for new files.
http://git-annex.branchable.com/news/sharebox_a_FUSE_filesystem_for_git-annex
Seems sharebox development stopped a year ago...now that you are working on the assistant, which sound awesome, I think you really should consider pick up the sharebox development and integrate it.
Too bad I missed kickstarter, but I might donate now. I just find it wierd that it said "Like Dropbox" on the title, but sharebox-like functionality is not on the roadmap, and being able to easily edit the files is a big feature of dropbox.