[Digikam-devel] git-annex support?

[Marcel Wiesweg]

> So, a simple question:
> 
> Assuming a well-written patch, is this something that would be likely to
> be merged? Note that I'm willing to do the hard work here.

My answer is: it depends ;-)
First, on Gilles' opinion of course.

In principal, I agree that such a form of storage management could provide a 
very interesting option for the scenario we face today (NAS, desktop, laptop, 
tablet, smartphone)

digikam's architecture is prepared to manage files that are currently not 
locally available - information, metadata and thumbnails are stored in a 
database so the thumbnail view will work. This is not enabled at the moment 
(offline collections are hidden) because the UI part is unimplemented, 
stopping at a point when the real file is not there and telling the user.
A good part of work.

A git-annex integration can be acceptable if it can be implemented non-
intrusively. That means not rewriting large parts of code by adding a "second 
case", but
1) a small API layer to interface with git-annex from C++, thread-safe, 
probably task based
2) a few small additions down at the ImageScanner
3) a background service for management, things like file dowloading
4) the UI bits as outlined above.
My first initial thoughts.

Be warned that this would be a fair amount of work.

Marcel