[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="alex@f04d0d3c452a2a99b27ccc93c1543bee4a1bf5be"
 nickname="alex"
 avatar="http://cdn.libravatar.org/avatar/9d97e9bcb1cf7680309e37cd69fab408"
 subject="Resuming an interrupted download"
 date="2021-10-01T23:27:31Z"
 content="""
It would be helpful to allow special remotes to take advantage of git annex's ability to resume interrupted downloads for large files, especially on slow/unreliable connections. One way to implement this would be to allow the special remote to send a message asking git-annex what offset it intends to read at, then write a sparse file with only the needed data. I notice the `testremote` suite includes tests for resuming downloads at an offset, so it is possible no other changes would be needed.

Sparse files could be avoided by allowing the special remote to send a command indicating the offset at which the target file starts.

Does that sound like a reasonable design?
"""]]
