Thanks to Joey's help, I managed to get the transfer repository setup working in a [previous forum question](https://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/client_repositories_setup_problem/).

Now, I'm trying to do something similar, but using a bare git repository as the transfer repo instead of a regular git repository.

Here's my bash script which bootstraps the setup stage:

```
#/usr/bin/env bash

# Useful links:
# https://git-annex.branchable.com/bare_repositories/

# Just a way to access the script's directory
cd "$(dirname "$0")"
DIR="$(pwd)"

# Create the 1st client repository
mkdir $DIR/client1
cd $DIR/client1
git init && git annex init

# Create the 2nd client repository
mkdir $DIR/client2
cd $DIR/client2
git init && git annex init

# Create the transfer repository
mkdir $DIR/share
cd $DIR/share
git init --bare && git annex init

# Setup the remotes and groups for the transfer repository
cd $DIR/share
git remote add client1 $DIR/client1
git remote add client2 $DIR/client2
git annex wanted . standard
git annex group . transfer
git annex group client1 client
git annex group client2 client
git annex mincopies 2
git annex numcopies 2

# Setup the remotes and groups for the 1st client repository.
cd $DIR/client1
git remote add share $DIR/share
git annex wanted . standard
git annex group . client
git annex group share transfer
git annex config --set annex.addunlocked true
git co -b main

# Setup the remotes and groups for the 2nd client repository.
cd $DIR/client2
git remote add share $DIR/share
git annex wanted . standard
git annex group . client
git annex group share transfer
git annex config --set annex.addunlocked true
git co -b main

# Add a single file to the 1st client.
cd $DIR/client1
touch file.txt
git annex add file.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"

# Needed step for bare repos, as documented in https://git-annex.branchable.com/bare_repositories/
cd $DIR/client1
git push share main

###############################################################################
# Need to do this if there are no commits in the 'client2' and 'share'
# repositories. Or else, I'll get the following logs:
#
# merge: refs/remotes/share/main - not something we can merge
# merge: refs/remotes/share/synced/main - not something we can merge
cd $DIR/client2
git pull share main
###############################################################################

# Run git-annex assistant for each repository
cd $DIR/client1 && git annex assistant
cd $DIR/client2 && git annex assistant

sleep 3;
cd $DIR/client1
echo "My first line" >> file.txt
```

The repo `client1` correctly contains 2 commits representing changes to `file.txt`.
Additionally, `share` and `client2` contain the same commits that were propagated.
However, I expected `cat client2/file.txt` to show "My first line", but it shows instead "/annex/objects/SHA256E-s14--42e950c34152a022a2ec82b2201a2287689e39d4d97bfcef67f8940b49d25d4b.txt".

Doing `git status` in `client2` yield:

```
  file.txt is a git-annex pointer file. Its content is not available in this repository. (Maybe file.txt was copied from another repository?)
```

but not sure how to solve this.

Running `git annex whereis` yields:

```
whereis file.txt (0 copies) failed
whereis: 1 failed
```

Any ideas what went wrong?

-- [[kolam]]
