[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="ewen"
 avatar="http://cdn.libravatar.org/avatar/605b2981cb52b4af268455dee7a4f64e"
 subject="Preferred content settings not really an alternative"
 date="2023-07-12T10:53:41Z"
 content="""
To echo @jkniiv's \"preferred content settings for all annexes\", as a git annex user for at least 8 years (the annex I found this issue in dates back to 2015), I've still never figured out how \"preferred content settings\" are supposed to help in git annex -- let alone for my use cases.

As an example, the git annex I spotted this new warning in is one I use for downloading/collecting podcasts.  The downloads happen on my desktop, or sometimes a laptop.  All content gets *pushed* to two of my NASes as soon as possible (for an \"archival copy\" -- immediately after download if I'm at home), and then once I've listened to the podcast I drop it from my desktop/laptop, so it's gone from the \"to listen\" queue (and historically, to recover space on smaller laptop drives).  I don't want the files suddenly appearing again, unless I need to refer to it for some reason, then I do \"git annex get ...\".

There's around 300GB of podcasts in the annex (around 7000 files) on my NASes; but the checked out version on my desktop is 9GB (about 200 files).  300GB is more space than some of my laptop internal drives have in total; and definitely more free space than any of them had, which is one of the reasons for using git annex for this purpose.

The \"preferred content policy\" is \"if I just downloaded it I want it until I drop it, then I don't want it unless I explicitly request it again, but the two NASes should always have copies\".   From [setting git annex preferred content policy](https://git-annex.branchable.com/preferred_content/), and the [preferred content policy syntax](https://git-annex.branchable.com/git-annex-preferred-content/), AFAICT \"present\" is the closest thing to the \"content policy\" I want on my desktop/laptops, ie \"trust the user, I know what I'm doing, don't automatically move files\".  But up to version \"10.20230626 + N\" that was also the default without a content policy, as file content didn't automagically move around unless some other policy was explicitly set.

Ewen
"""]]
