git-annex's metadata works best when files have a lot of useful metadata attached to them.
To make git-annex automatically set the year and month when adding files,
run git config annex.genmetadata true
.
A git commit hook can be set up to extract lots of metadata from files like photos, mp3s, etc.
- Install the
extract
utility, from http://www.gnu.org/software/libextractor/
apt-get install extract
- Download pre-commit-annex and install it in your git-annex repository
as
.git/hooks/pre-commit-annex
.
Remember to make the script executable! - Run:
git config metadata.extract "artist album title camera_make video_dimensions"
Now any fields you list in metadata.extract to will be extracted and stored when files are committed.
To get a list of all possible fields, run: extract -L | sed 's/ /_/g'
By default, if a git-annex already has a metadata field for a file,
its value will not be overwritten with metadata taken from files.
To allow overwriting, run: git config metadata.overwrite true
is there a way for this to be done globally, without having to install and configure the hook for each repository? it seems like a fairly useful feature that could be factored in git-annex itself (as opposed to be shipped as a shell script)...
also, is there a way to retroactively parse the tags from existing files (as opposed to only new files added to the repo).
thanks
@anarcat, I have modified pre-commit-annex so if it's passed already annexed files, it'll extract their metadata.
So this can be used to add metadata to files added before you installed the hook, or if you've configured more fields to be extracted.