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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

(Not a git-annex user here). I suppose functionally, these two are similar. But the use case is different. git-annex seems to be more for managing files and making sure they don't disappear on you. GitHub's new thing is for keeping track of larger objects inside your git project efficiently. Basically, yeah, you can use git-annex to store the PSD, the audio samples, the promo video, etc. but wouldn't it be nice to have it all tied in with your normal project workflow?

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> (Not a git-annex user here)

You could at least read the examples on the git-annex page[1] before passing judgement that the use cases are at all different (they're not). Instead of using a new 'lfs' command that ties you to GitHub, you use an 'annex' command (along with a few others).

Git-annex does just fine "keeping track of larger objects inside your git project efficiently", and is no more divorced from your normal project workflow than GitHub's lfs.

[1]http://git-annex.branchable.com/git-annex/

I tried git-annex a couple of times to sync my 2 OSX and linux based computers at my house and play around. It wasn't the easiest thing to get setup and working and I couldn't get one of the OSX hosts to work at all.

I'm sure this will be much easier to use for the end user like other github products and will "just work" out of the box.

As a counterpoint, I just set up git-annex and sync'd a couple of local servers plus a remote server, with no issues, by following along in the walkthrough. Granted, it's not exactly an out-of-the-box setup, like say, syncthing, but it wasn't anything overly difficult.

If you want to use git-annex without any setup consider using GitLab.com, it is enabled by default and free to use.

Make a Kickstarter to put it in Gitlab CE, I'd propose.

We'd be up for that :)

I did read the use cases and the main pitch. I guess these don't highlight very well how it actually functions. Can I do "git add large.mp4 && git commit" the way I do now?

Yes, you can. That's one other advantage over git-annex (albeit slight).

The documentation lays out the workflow: https://help.github.com/articles/configuring-large-file-stor...

As does the website: https://git-lfs.github.com/ (see: "Getting Started")

Righto. So what is the equivalent thing with git-annex? Would I have to essentially do two commits, one for source code and one for large objects?

I'm still ramping up on git-annex, but basically (once set up):

    git annex add large_file
    git commit

And with mixed (haven't experimented with that yet), I'm pretty sure you could: git annex add large_file git add small_file git commit

Yes, you can mix them just fine.

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