blocking problems

git-annex-survey/ polls/ 2015/ blocking problems

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← happyness | 2015 git-annex user survey | focus →

If a problem is preventing you from using git-annex, or the git-annex assistant, please indicate it here.

If you're currently using git-annex, you can instead answer on behalf of less technically adept friends or family, and identify a problem blocking them from using the git-annex assistant.

too hard to install (3%)

too hard to use (5%)

not good enough documentation (14%)

because of a bug (that has been reported) (2%)

because of a bug (that's not been reported yet) (0%)

because I don't think it's ready (0%)

The only use for the assistant would be in combination with a good, native, fully automagic Android version which includes some sort of native UI (19%)

Performance with many files is somewhat meh (15%)

The lack of selective file sync (ie, git annex get and git annex drop) is what prevents me from using the Assistant (8%)

I use the command line, and find it difficult to show others how to use the git-annex assistant (9%)

new things are scary (0%)

have lost files in the past (very likely because of my own messing about) and although it's straightforward to restart from a healthy clone, i'm always a bit anxious about messing things up (7%)

preferred content settings are very wonky and make automation much harder (2%)

Tried it once for a few weeks... didn't work reliably back then (~2 years ago) (1%)

Too hard to use. But it *is* a tool for the more tech adept, so that is not a problem in my perception. Don't trade the powerfulness for average user compatibility. Fire-and-forget solutions exist like sand at the seeside. (1%)

inconsistent handling of file metadata (mtime, mostly) (1%)

doesn't seem able to handle hundreds of offline archives (e.g., burnt CDs/DVDs) well (1%)

breaking with external plugins in the past (Glacier) (0%)

Handling of encrypted repositories can be difficult (0%)

Write in:

Total votes: 153

(Note that missing ports covers ports to IOS etc, so don't add them here.)

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i chose "too hard to use"...

... but i am using git-annex, so obviously, this is mostly about other people, although i do have my own "oh shit" moments when i manage to find the bugs that will delete (or seem to delete) all my files... i managed to loose files with git-annex in the past, and while things are much, much better now in direct mode, i am always a little too scared about this. nowadays, i always try to sync files to backups before doing funky stuff, so i haven't lost data in a long time now (and it was only one file, on july 2014: i have it in the git-annex log :). I don't actually remember how i managed to loose that file...

Now, "too hard to use" is really where I want to share git-annex with the broader community of people around me. I am somewhat able to show how interesting it is to other geeks, but even there, there seems to be some frictions at the usability level (it was reported as being too "cranky" by a friend :)... It seems that, to enjoy working with git-annex, you need to know git, and that's a huge barrier for entry for such a useful software. The assistant helps, but only if you don't care about "selective file sync" (which was another possible option here, but seemed too specific for me).

A major issue for users i am trying to train is that i use git-annex to share files, but not all the files. Then the user has the what are those arrow things issue and gets frustrated because the files are there, but they can't actually see them at all... Hiding those non-present files would be an improvement, at least, but then they don't know how to fetch them either. It would be useful to have some sort of "queueing" system where they would say: "i want this, this and that" and then when i plugin the external drive, the assistant would go and fetch whatever it needs (git annex open touches on that, but this is also git annex queue.

But yeah, I tried to get video folks to start using it, and it's just this "ooh, got to learn another software" thing... And they are probably running windows or OS X or whatnot, and they already have a workflow that they admit is broken and messy and they are scared to death to loose files, but at the end of the day, they need that movie out and they don't have time to learn a new tool. If they need to share stuff, they use dropbox or shove things into the internet archive, or even vimeo (!) by hand. If they need to backup, they copy paste shit in their file manager to external drives and cross their fingers their brain keeps track of shit.

I hope we can make git-annex simpler so that we can help people manage their media libraries and huge files collections more easily. It's a huge usability challenge, but i think git-annex got to a point where the internal mechanics are working well enough that the top can start to be really interesting.