NAME

git-annex unannex - undo accidental add command

SYNOPSIS

git annex unannex [path ...]

DESCRIPTION

Use this to undo an accidental git annex add command. It puts the file back how it was before the add.

Note that for safety, the content of the file remains in the annex, until you use git annex unused and git annex dropunused.

This is not the command you should use if you intentionally added a file some time ago, and don't want its contents any more. In that case you should use git annex drop instead, and you can also git rm the file.

OPTIONS

--fast

Normally this does a slow copy of the file. In --fast mode, it instead makes a hard link from the file to the content in the annex. But use --fast mode with caution, because editing the file will change the content in the annex.
file matching options

The git-annex-matching-options(1) can be used to specify files to unannex.
Also the git-annex-common-options(1) can be used.

AUTHOR

Joey Hess id@joeyh.name

Warning: Automatically converted into a man page by mdwn2man. Edit with care.

comment 5

@datamanager the git-annex unannex command can't rewrite git history, it just stops further tracking of an annexed file by git. Any way you would usually scrub an unwanted commit out of git's history can be used with git-annex; scrubbing mentioned of hashes out of the git-annex branch's history gets more involved.

Once you have run git-annex unannex on a file, it's not annexed, so commands like git-annex whereis will not have anything to say about it.

Comment by joey — Thu Jan 26 19:33:52 2023

is there some way to remove a file I've commited?

Essentially, I want to tell git-annex to forget about my file; remove it from the annex, and put the original file back where it was in my local filesystem.

I made the mistake of adding a list of files accidentally, and then panicked. I even ran git-annex-sync, so there's now a commit on the git-annex branch with my accidentally added files. I thought that maybe I could just revert that commit and all would be well, but I thought I'd seek some assistance before doing that.

I haven't copied the files to any other remotes as yet, but git-annex-whereis returns nothing when I give it one of the paths I added by mistake, so those files seem to be in some kind of limbo, where they're in the annex, but it doesn't know about them. I am not sure what I broke along the way.

Comment by datamanager — Thu Jan 26 19:33:52 2023

Ok, v6 not mature yet (as of 2016-10).

with the newer v6 repository format, git annex unannex is able to safely handle files that have been added and not committed yet.

I was puzzled, believing that recent versions used v6 repository format.

Indeed, all my repositories have been created with 6.20161011-g3135d35 with default options (indirect mode).

git-annex version: 6.20161011-g3135d35
build flags: Assistant Webapp Pairing Testsuite S3(multipartupload)(storageclasses) WebDAV Inotify DBus DesktopNotify XMPP ConcurrentOutput TorrentParser MagicMime Feeds Quvi
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 SHA1E SHA1 MD5E MD5 WORM URL
remote types: git gcrypt S3 bup directory rsync web bittorrent webdav tahoe glacier ddar hook external
local repository version: 5
supported repository versions: 3 5 6
upgrade supported from repository versions: 0 1 2 3 4 5
operating system: linux x86_64

I understand now that v6 is still experimental and not enabled by default ( ref http://git-annex.branchable.com/devblog/day_421__lost_in_the_trees/ ).

Comment by https://launchpad.net/~stephane-gourichon-lpad — Thu Jan 26 19:33:52 2023

comment 2

The behavior your comment describes is only the case with v5 repoitories in indirect mode. With v5 direct mode repositories and with the newer v6 repository format, git annex unannex is able to safely handle files that have been added and not committed yet.

Comment by joey — Thu Jan 26 19:33:52 2023

This needs to commit first. Any alternative?

Hello and thank you for git-annex.

Context

Every newbie needs to understand what steps are possible and what to do when a wrong step was made.

The wording "undo accidental add command" suggested (to me at least) that it was intended to be issued just right after the accidental add command, before any commit.

Steps to reproduce

Right after git annex add path, do git annex unannex path.

Expected behavior

git annex unannex path would undo the add.

More precisely, it would walk the path given, find any symlink pointing to annexed data and not committed yet, and replace it with a plain file with the linked content, honoring --fast option if given.

Observed behavior

git-annex: Cannot proceed with uncommitted changes staged in the index. Recommend you: git commit

If user follows this path, there will be two unnecessary commits: an add commit and an unannex commit.

There may be reasons to prefer not to introduce those commits. Granted, git allows to adjust history after the fact. Is there a simpler solution?

Question, summarized

Is there a command to just revert a "add", without introducing any commit?

Details

Full test log below:

{
cd /tmp/ ; mkdir testga ; cd testga ; 
git init ; git annex init ; 
echo "test" > test ; 
git annex add test ; git annex unannex test
}

Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/testga/.git/
init  ok
(recording state in git...)
add test ok
(recording state in git...)
git-annex: Cannot proceed with uncommitted changes staged in the index. Recommend you: git commit

Thank you for any hint.