[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="Atemu"
 avatar="http://cdn.libravatar.org/avatar/d1f0f4275931c552403f4c6707bead7a"
 subject="comment 2"
 date="2021-10-19T12:26:33Z"
 content="""
> Since this was posted, fsck has stopped complaining about files dropped with `dropunused`.

Thank you!

> I could imagine formalizing this ad-hoc tag into something standard in git-annex.

This is the best option I think; some sort of flag you can set on a key that marks it as unwanted and propagates via the git-annex branch.
The actual deletions could then be carried out on the individual repos by using a dedicated command (`dropdeleted`?), by the assistant or perhaps even using `sync --content`. 

The important bit is that it shouldn't be synchronous or depend on the repository being reachable directly though; it should be recorded and propagated asynchronously.  
E.g. in any tree of repos with assistants running (so, no transitive connections), marking a key as deleted in any one of them should result in the key being deleted from all of them.

> But one problem with it is it may not play well in multiuser environments where people have different ideas about what files they want to delete all copies of.

Ah, I didn't consider that. A recycle bin with tracked files is likely infeasible but an untracked one could still be valuable. That's a topic for another issue though.

"""]]
